


No Question That Night Falls

by AxolotlQueen



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: (I swear there is a happy ending), (not graphic), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bipolar Disorder, Bipolar Newton Geiszler, Chuck Lives, Depression, Drift Side Effects, Established Relationship, Families of Choice, Goodbyes, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Memories, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Science Experiments, Suicidal Thoughts, Technological Inaccuracies, Temporary Character Death, Terminal Illnesses, The Drift (Pacific Rim), Virtual Reality, Vomiting, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-08 18:57:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 41,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1952424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AxolotlQueen/pseuds/AxolotlQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They save the world, and then half an hour later, the world ends anyway.</p><p>"It ends the second that Hermann suddenly grabs at Newt’s shoulder and says, 'Newton-' in a peculiar, choked voice. Newt looks up at him, startled, suddenly afraid, and across the Drift that he didn’t realize was still open, a flash of pain comes. Hermann croaks, 'I don’t feel right.'</p><p>Then his eyes roll back in his head and he collapses to the floor."</p><p>The Drift has serious effects on Hermann. Newt must race to find a way to save him while there is still time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Oh Lament, Oh Molten Panic

**Author's Note:**

> So, I saw [this post](http://newmannheadcanons.tumblr.com/post/90905032859/ive-seen-all-the-head-canons-under-the-sun-for-how-the) by [newmannheadcanons](http://newmannheadcanons.tumblr.com/) and it sort of...haunted me. You'll recognize the opening scene from something described in the post. I wasn't going to do anything with it, only then I came up with what I think is really an interesting idea, so I sorta HAD to write it. Be warned that the story is sad most of the way through. 
> 
> The post is about Hermann having MS. I do not personally headcanon that (this story is NOT what I think happens after the canon, just me exploring an idea.) MS did not entirely fit what I wanted for this story _and_ I am not particularly educated about MS and didn't want to misrepresent it, so instead the illness in this story is a non-specified fatal, brain degenerating disease loosely based on things such as MS and the Japanese drama _1 Liter of Tears_. Please note the Medical Inaccuracy tag. 
> 
> Chuck is alive because I am physically incapable of killing Chuck. 
> 
> The poem quoted in this story and that I took the title and chapter titles from is Pablo Neruda's Barcarole. I'm using Robert Hass's translation, which can be found [here](http://poempandora.blogspot.com/2010/10/pablo-neruda-barcarole.html). All credit to them.

They save the world. They save the world, and then half an hour later, the world ends anyway. Or, no, not the world. The world goes turning relentlessly fucking on, the human race continues to live and fight and die. It’s not the world that ends. Just Newt’s world. 

He can name the exact second. It’s after they close the Breach. After Hermann edges closer to him with that tentative smile and nudges his shoulder, after Newt hugs him tight. After they both grin. After Raleigh’s pod surfaces and after he is revealed to be breathing and alive. After the third pod unexpectedly surfaces too and Chuck is found to be inside. After they reset the clock. After everyone in the Dome cheers, including Newt. It’s after all that. 

The world ends the second that Hermann suddenly grabs at Newt’s shoulder and says, “Newton-” in a peculiar, choked voice. Newt looks up at him, startled, suddenly afraid, and across the Drift that he didn’t realize was still open, a flash of pain comes across. The blotchy ring of blood around his left eye is bigger. Hermann croaks, “I don’t feel right.” 

Then his eyes roll back in his head and he collapses to the floor. It is not a stagger or a slow folding; he falls as if all his muscles have gone limp at once, making no attempt to catch himself at all. His head cracks on the metal floor. His cane clatters against the ground a second later. Everyone in LOCCENT turns to stare. 

The pain in his head that is not Newt’s stops, replaced with a peculiar sensation like a blast of white static. For a moment that is all Newt hears. There is silence in the room. Newt doesn’t move. No one does. Everyone just _looks_ at the figure on the floor, waiting, perhaps, for him to move, to insist he’s fine, to get up. 

The stillness of the room only lasts an instant. The people here are a group of highly trained individuals who have spent the last ten plus years dealing with unexpected event after event. They probably have the fastest reaction times in the world. So they stare for one uncomprehending second, and Hermann does not move, and then everyone jerks into motion. 

Herc roars, “Call Medical!” Tendo tersely snaps something into the intercom system. Newt drops to his knees. Feels for Hermann’s pulse. It’s there, barely, a faint flutter against Newt’s fingers. Next, he holds a hand under his nose - when did Hermann’s nose start bleeding? - he’s breathing. Short,shallow inhalations. Herc is there on the other side of Hermann without Newt having noticed him move. There’s others crowding around too, and Herc snaps, “Oi, step back, give him room to breathe, no crowding, dammit!” 

“Medical is on their way!” Tendo reports. 

Hermann still isn’t moving.

Newt puts a trembling hand on Hermann’s cheek and whispers, “Herms.” His skin is cold. He does not move. His eyes do not so much as flutter.

Herc and Tendo say more stuff, but Newt doesn’t hear it because the static in his mind and ears has grown and grown into an endless ring, an alarm blaring too late, and the tinnitus is blocking out every sound and he can’t tear his eyes away from Hermann’s far too pale face. 

This can’t be happening. This is a nightmare. This is some fucked up hallucination caused by the Drift. This can’t be hap- 

The Drift. The _strain_ of the Drift. Hermann’s bleeding eye and nausea and the way he staggered through the halls. Oh no no no-

Herc grabs Newt’s wrist. Of the hand still on Hermann’s cheek. His skin feels so hot in comparison. Newt startles hard and looks up at him. “Geiszler!” he says, loud enough for Newt to hear him over the ring of his ears. Newt suspects he said it more than once. “You need to step back!”

Newt wants to protest. Opens his mouth to do so, even. He isn’t going to move a fucking inch away from his Drift partner, you fucking fascist, there’s no fucking way- But then he sees the people next to Herc, new people, kneeling at Hermann’s side, and Newt’s brain isn’t really functioning properly - no don’t think about that no - but after a second he recognizes the uniforms as being Medical and oh. There’s a stretcher on the ground.

It’s hard to stand up because his legs are shaking, but Tendo is now next to Newt now and he gently hauls him up, supports him as he stumbles on shaking legs after the Medical staff carrying Hermann on the stretcher. Even when Newt shakes him off outside of LOCCENT so that he can go faster, Tendo still trails close behind.

Newt wants to tell them. Needs to tell them. But when they actually reach the Medical Wing, one of the doctors blocks him from going any further than the lobby. She’s vaguely familiar. 

“Dr. Geiszler, if we are to properly help Dr. Gottlieb, we need no distraction.”

Newt is gasping for breath. But he hadn’t even walked that quickly. “B-but, you need to know, he’s, his brain, the Drift-”

Her face is stern but kind when she says, “I know. I have been treating Dr. Gottlieb ever since he came here, and I know a damn lot about the effects of the Drift as well. I know. Don’t worry, I’ll do everything I can.” And she shuts him out. 

It’s really good that Tendo is there because Newt’s knees kind of give way then, and he would just fall to the tiled floor if Tendo wasn’t there to hold him up and steer him into a chair. His brain is working in stops and starts, blank for one instant, the next unhelpfully wondering how it can be that the Dome Med Wing has the exact same plastic, uncomfortable chairs all hospitals have-

The next second silently screaming in terror.

_Not Hermann, please not Hermann._

“He’ll be okay,” Tendo says reassuringly. “It’s probably just Drift overload-”

Newt shakes his head. This movement is enough to push the tears pooling in his eyes down his cheeks. This can’t be happening. “No. He’s. You don’t understand. His limp. He’s sick. He didn’t want anyone to know. But he’s really sick. The, the Drift. God, no, I shouldn’t have ever allowed him, oh god.”

“Sick?” Tendo repeats, and it might be the first time that Newt has ever heard him uncertain in all the time he’s known him.

“He lied to me,” Newt whispers. “He didn’t tell me how bad it was. I didn’t know it was that bad.” He can see it now in the memories from the Drift, memories he didn’t even know he’d accumulated. Doctor appointments that Hermann didn’t tell him about, increased prescriptions, worsening symptoms. Decreasing time. His secret terror when he offered to Drift with Newt and the kaiju. “I wouldn’t have let him. I swear to god, I wouldn’t. If I knew it was that bad. I, I shouldn’t have let him anyway.”

“But,” Tendo says, fear tracing the words. It sounds so strange in his voice. Tendo doesn’t do fear. “He’s going to be fine, right? He’s sick but it’s...He’s just sick. It’s okay. Right?”

Newt can’t see past the tears. A sob tears from his throat. “It’s fatal. He was going to die.” The words don’t seem to come from him. They paint themselves on the air before him, hanging lurid and hard-edged. Who would say such an awful thing about Hermann? “He was always going to die eventually. But now. I think he, it might be w-worse- Oh god. Oh god. I, I- I think I’m gonna throw up.” 

 

 

The next hours filter in to Newt as a series of disconnected details. 

Tests. Test results. Serious faced doctors. Quiet explanations. The clock ticking on the wall. A heart monitor beeping. Antiseptic smell. Voices outside Hermann’s room. White walls. A sympathetic squeeze of Newt’s shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, Dr. Geiszler. There's nothing more we can do.” 

Hermann very still and small in a hospital bed. Still unconscious. 

Someone is screaming. Newt figures out after a while that it’s him, silently, in his head.

 

 

Hermann doesn’t wake up for a day and a half. Newt doesn’t leave the Medical Wing in all that time, and when he is allowed to go into Hermann’s small, private room - which manages to look remarkably like a hospital room despite being in the heart of a massive military complex - he sits himself at Hermann’s bedside and refuses to move. He needs to be there when Hermann wakes up.

He’s been there for...he’s not sure how long, but several hours, when the door opens again and a solitary figure slips in quietly. He looks up, expecting more doctors, more bad news - but no, there can’t possibly be anything bad left to happen after these past few days - and instead sees Mako. 

Mako is not in the best shape. Her usually perfect hair is tousled and textured with salt - sweat and sea water and tears - and she’s wearing a sweater and jeans that are obviously borrowed. Every patch of bare skin shows bandaids or cuts or bruises. Her eyes are heavily shadowed. So it’s probably a bad sign that she winces sympathetically at the sight of Newt and Hermann. (Asleep. Still asleep. What if he never wakes up- Shut _up_.) It’s only a tiny twitch of her mouth and eyes, but Newt has known Mako for more than five years now. He recognizes her expressions.

“Mako,” he says stupidly. “Hi.” 

“I...heard what happened,” she says. Whispers. She moves out of the doorway only enough to close the door behind her. 

“Yeah,” Newt says, hoping she heard all of it and that he doesn’t have to explain. When the silence stretches out a little too long, he adds, “Congrats on saving the world and all.” 

She bites her lip. A painfully obvious show of emotion, for her. “We could not have done it without you,” she says brokenly. “Both of you.” 

Newt looks down. “Yeah.” He was going to rub this in everyone’s face. He did the impossible, and he saved the world, he was a fucking rock star, he and Hermann, and he was going to be so unbearably smug about that, and now all he can say is “ _Yeah_.” 

Mako cautiously crosses the room to the bed. There’s another chair in the corner. She pulls it up next to Newt and sits down. She tries to smile at Hermann. “Hello, Dr. Gottlieb. Thank you for your help. I am very grateful.” 

Mako is probably one of the very few people in the world that could get away with calling Hermann by his first name, and yet she’s one of the best about calling him by his title. Newt thinks emptily that he really loves Mako. 

She glances up at Newt. “Chuck would visit if he could,” she says. “But he’s...not in very good shape. He will be okay, but right now he cannot get out of bed. But he was very concerned when he...when he heard.” 

Newt sort of forgot to worry about Chuck. Or any of the Rangers. How awful of him. 

“Oh. Oh yeah. He’s...He’s okay? That’s good. What about Becket, he still in good shape? And, and you too, should you be up and about?” 

She pats Newt’s hand. Hermann’s too, by extension, as Newt has not let go of his hand in hours. “We are all fine. Chuck will need to be on bed rest for a long time, Raleigh is having some tests run on him, but they are both fine. I have been cleared to leave the Medical Wing, but I wanted to...visit, first.” 

“Thanks for that,” Newt mumbles. “That’s, uh, that’s good. He’d be glad.” 

Mako’s small, polite smile hurts. “I will visit again, later. I’ll leave you alone for now. I promised Chuck I would update him. He is in the room next door.” 

Newt nods a little too much. “Yeah. Cool. Good.”

She touches his hand again. “Good-bye.”

He hates that word. Phrase. Whatever.

“Bye.” 

It seems too silent the instant the door closes behind her. The pauses between blips of the heart monitor seem longer each time. Newt would panic over that but he’s now reached this state of utter physical and emotional exhaustion that makes it impossible to feel anything. He knows that won’t last long. Probably only until Hermann wakes up.

Why hasn’t he woken up yet?

A few hours after Mako, Hermann’s kind faced doctor - Dr. Torres, Newt feels now as if he should remember her name, or maybe it’s more that now he could never possibly forget - tries to gently persuade Newt that he should go to sleep, but he refuses to move. There’s a small bathroom attached to this hospital room, and he can probably doze in this chair. No need for him to leave. 

Another handful of hours after that, Tendo pops in to check up on him and Hermann and to bring Newt some food that he pretends to pick at. He sits with them both for awhile, but his forced optimism grates at Newt, and Tendo seems to recognize that. He leaves soon. 

Newt looks at the clock ticking ceaselessly on the wall. It’s been over 24 hours since Hermann collapsed. He still hasn’t woken up.

And then he does. Slowly. His eyes flutter and open and then close again, he shifts in bed, he makes a soft, wordless sound, then a groan. Pain, maybe. This goes on a for a few minutes before he’s actually properly conscious. But he’s on a lot of drugs, so Newt tries not to worry about that. It’s just the drugs. 

The blankness he had cultivated is shattered just by Hermann’s movement. Newt’s heart starts pounding at twice its previous rate. This is more than twice as fast as the heart rate recorded by Hermann’s heart monitor.

Hermann opens his eyes all the way at last, blinking blearily. Newt bends over his face, trying to block out the sight of the hospital room, at least at first. Hermann hates waking up in hospitals, a hatred that verges on panic. Best to keep him calm. 

“Hey, Herms, hey there,” Newt whispers, taking one of his hands. “G’morning, sleeping beauty. Frog prince. How are you?” He’s babbling. He should stop that.

Hermann’s obviously disoriented. He blinks several times, more than necessary. Tries to turn his head to look around. Says, “Newton?” in a raspy voice, and, “What-” He doesn’t like not knowing where he is or what’s going on. It scares him, Newt knows that. 

Newt runs his thumbs in circles over the back of Hermann’s hand. He takes a deep breath. It only shakes a little. His voice almost sounds calm when he talks. “We Drifted with the baby Kaiju. Do you remember that?”

A slow nod of his head. He’s so pale that it sets off a low ache deep in Newt. 

“Okay. That’s good. Um. Then we came back to the Dome. We told them how to close the Breach.” He tries to smile. It feels wrong on his face. Hermann’s eyes are starting to show terror. Newt clasps his hand tighter and works to make the smile real. “They did it. Closed the Breach, dude. It’s. It’s all over. And Mako and Chuck and Raleigh, they’re all alive. You, uh, maybe you remember? But, um. After that. Y-you-” He pauses for another deep breath. “You passed out.”

“I- Oh. How long was I…”

“Um. A day. A little more than that. I’m not sure exactly.”

The fear spikes at that. “W-why?”

Calm calm calm be calm.

“The Drift, it, uh, it...messed you up.” 

Hermann shuts his eyes and gasps. The beeps of the heart monitor suddenly start coming faster and less regularly. Newt’s not doing a very good job at not scaring him.

“Hey, hey,” Newt whispers. “Hermann. Shh. Deep breaths, come on. Do your counting- Or. Uh. I’ll. 0. 1. 1. 2. 3. 5…”

He keeps counting, but he’s only gotten into the early hundreds before Hermann interrupts him. He gets out, “I’ve-” before he starts coughing. 

He can’t sit up on his own. Newt has to help him. Just the drugs. Exhaustion. That’s all. He’s so skinny these days. Newt can feel his ribs through the thin cotton of the hospital pajamas. It isn’t hard at all to pull him upright. He can drink on his own once Newt hands him a glass of water; small, careful sips. 

“It made me worse, didn’t it,” he murmurs in a numb, exhausted voice once he has quelled the weak coughs. 

Newt looks down at the bed.

“Newton. How bad.”

“I asked them to let me tell you.” He shouldn’t have. He can’t do this. This can’t be happening.

“Newton, please.” 

He promised himself he wouldn’t cry. He _promised_. “They ran a bunch of tests. You’re. Uh. The Drift. It. It-” He promised he promised he promised. “A lot of damage was done. As well as that...The rate of degeneration of your brain cells has rapidly increased and shows no sign of slowing down. They don’t know how to stop it.”

Newt allows himself to live in the span of time before Hermann asks the inevitable next question. An entire lifetime in that minute. A lifetime next to Hermann, holding his hand, his cool, dry hand, a big hand with long, slim fingers, short nails so that he doesn’t bite them or dig them into his palms. One time he let Newt paint his fingernails, and Newt did a really careful job, used the last of his favorite dark blue color that he knew he wouldn’t be able to replace while the war and rationing was still on, and coated it with a layer of clear polish that had silver sparkles shaped like stars. He expected Hermann to remove it within a day, or to pick it all off, but he left it on his nails for as long as it lasted. Weeks later there was still flecks of blue and silver. All gone now, of course. Newt deserves this lifetime of holding Hermann’s hand. They both do. 

“How long?”

Newt promised but the tears come after all. And he’s looking down still, not at Hermann’s face, but Hermann will surely know he’s crying anyway because the hot tears run down his face and drip onto Newt and Hermann’s joined hands. “A month. Maybe less.” 

He hears Hermann’s sharp inhale. “A month?” he echoes, and normally Hermann is so fucking good at acting calm and collected about his sickness. Newt always suspected he was secretly afraid, but it wasn’t until the Drift that he had any proof. But now...Hermann’s voice is tiny and high and shocked. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting that short of a time. 

Newt makes the mistake of looking at his face. 

When Newt was running through Hong Kong, quite literally being chased down by a kaiju. When Otachi broke through into the shelter and only didn’t find him because Mako and Raleigh chose that perfect moment to attack. When Otachi’s baby ate Chau right in front of his eyes and barely missed him. Those were the worst things Newt had ever felt. A terror that had his heart beating so fast it was physically painful, gasping for breath that ripped at his lungs, expecting to die and knowing how completely he didn’t want to die. It was a terror that overwhelmed his whole being and went on and on far past where it seemed as if it _had_ to end. 

Looking at Hermann’s face right now is a thousand times worse. Hermann has gone even whiter. His eyes are open very wide. His pupils are pinpricks. He’s gasping again. And there is just terror, pure, raw terror there on his face.

Newt’s heart. His eyes. His lungs. His thoughts. His head. His hand. These are all the things that manifest pain, and each one hurts worse than a human being could possibly bear. He is being ripped to pieces and every fragments is more painful than human being could possibly endure. He thinks of what Raleigh must have felt when his brother was torn from the CONN Pod, and he envies him. At least that happened fast. This sundering will be slow. A month. Hermann being torn from him over the period of a month.

Newt sobs out his name, and flings his arms around his neck, pressing his wet face to Hermann’s cold one. He wants to say “It’ll be okay.” And he can’t say it. It won’t be okay. 

 

 

“I was afraid it would make it worse,” Hermann says dully, later that day. His speech is slightly slurred. “But I didn’t expect it to be that much worse.”

The hospital bed is regular issue, and therefore narrow as fuck. But Hermann is skinny and Newt is small and they _want_ to be as close together as possible, so they’ve managed to squeeze both of them in, each on their side, Newt’s front pressed to Hermann’s back, one arm wrapped securely against him, as if he can hold Hermann here. He’s pretending that he can. The test results are spread all about them, Newt’s tears marking a few of the pages.

“You should have told me you’d gotten worse,” Newt whispers, without any real anger. 

“I know. I’m sorry. I wanted to do as much as I could, b-before I couldn’t work anymore. And it seemed as if we were nearing the end, and I was…”

“You were scared I’d make you slow down. Or that the Marshal would.”

Hermann swallows awkwardly. “Yes. And...you would have stopped me. From Drifting.” 

There is a little anger this time. “Of _course_ I would have.” 

“It was worth it.”

More anger. Not at Hermann. “It was not.”

“We closed the Breach.”

“Fuck the fucking Breach.” 

“We saved the world.”

“Fuck the world. Let it end.” 

“I only would have had a few more years anyway. A decade, perhaps,” he insists. Stubborn to the end. Literally.

“A decade is better than a month,” Newt whispers, perilously close to tears again. But no, he can’t be, there are surely no tears left in him.

“The kaiju would have ruined everything before then. We’d all be dead in a few years.”

“I don’t care,” Newt insists. “I don’t fucking care. I’d rather have those few years. I’d rather have time with you then save the world, I’d rather have you than be a rock star, Hermann, you...losing you is...Having to choose between losing you or losing the world, its no fucking difference to me except that one way I get more time with you, it’s the end of everything either way.” 

Hermann is trembling. Newt doesn’t know if that’s a symptom or just emotion. Doesn’t really matter, he supposes. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do. You are my world, Hermann. It’s not...It’s not fair. The world is ending either way, it’s not _fair_ …”

“I’m sorry,” Hermann whispers. The "r" slurs instead of rolling. 

Newt presses his face to the nape of his neck. The short hairs of his undercut tickle his face. Newt has always loved stroking those smooth, soft hairs. “Hermann. I.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I know. I know. I love you.” 

“I’d rather have Drifted alone and melted my brain than have this happen.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I might have been okay.”

“No.”

“Please don’t go.” His voice cracks and shatters into tiny fragments. 

Newt would say that it’s Hermann’s turn to cry then, but somehow Newt is the one to cry again.

 

 

Hermann looks perfect when he sleeps. Newt stares at him and realizes some things. There’s no fucking way that this is all there will be to it. No. 

He doesn’t want to move from his position on the bed, holding Hermann as he sleeps and Newt’s tears dry on his neck. But. The doctors checked Hermann out again, after he woke up and in between bouts of Newt crying, and said that he can leave the medical wing tomorrow, so he’ll need clothes tomorrow. 

Newt presses a kiss to his neck and carefully unfolds himself from the bed. Hermann is usually such a light sleeper. Today he doesn’t even shift when Newt moves. He mostly convinces himself that that is purely exhaustion. God knows that Newt is tired enough to sleep for days without moving, and he’s perfectly healthy.

They ran some tests on him after Hermann, just to make sure. Newt is officially completely okay other than fatigue and sundry bruises and scrapes. Good for him.

The door to the room next to theirs is open, but Newt is far too out of it to notice this. He walks past it like a zombie and takes several seconds to respond to the hoarse, cracked voiced calling out from the room. He's nearly gone before he registers the voice is saying his name.

Chuck. Right. Mako mentioned he was in the next room over. Newt backtracks until he is in the doorway and leans his body up against the door frame to examine the man in the bed before him. 

Chuck looks like hell. But in a fairly anticipated way: cuts, bruises, burns, one arm folded across his chest in a cast, one leg suspended from the ceiling in a sling. He reminds Newt forcibly of cartoons from his childhood, when a character would suffer some fate that was ridiculously, obviously fatal and then later would be shown in a hospital, totally wrapped in bandages, every limb in some sort of cast, and yet somehow alive.

“You look like shit,” Newt remarks with a lightness that sounds strange to his own ears. 

“Same t’you,” Chuck retorts. Kid’s always been such a brat. Although considering that Newt is still in the same blood-stained clothing he’s been wearing for who knows how many days now, he has a point. “How is he?”

Newt doesn’t say anything. He’s still trying to figure out what to say. Before it comes to him, Chuck says in a small voice, “Oh.”

It must be oh so visible on his face. The tear stains, at the very least.

“Yeah,” Newt says, and walks out of the doorway, back out into the lobby of the Med Wing, and then out into the Dome proper.

There are still people partying in the hallways. It’s only been slightly less than 48 hours since they closed the Breach, Newt realizes with a dulled sense of amazement. The partiers go quiet and solemn faced when he passes. He wonders what stories are being passed around. He wonders, but he doesn’t really care.

He runs into Herc shortly before he reaches Hermann’s room. He knows from looking at Herc’s face - the grim, apologetic eyes, the set shoulders - that he knows. He might have known all along that Hermann was sick. It was in his personnel report. Pentecost knew. It’s not so unlikely that he told his second in command. And the doctors probably told him the rest of it. He’s in charge now, of course they did. Marshal Hansen. Sounds weird.

Newt isn’t sure he can handle having to tell someone else and he really doesn’t want to cry in front of the new marshal, so it’s good that Herc already knows.

“Geiszler,” he says seriously, with that determined frown that all these military types get. That Hermann gets sometimes too. He wanted to join the airforce so badly when he was younger. “We’re not just going to give up. We canceled the fucking apocalypse, we’re not just going to let him die. After everything you two did- We’ll be able to get specialists, we won’t just let this happen-”

“I know,” Newt growls. “Did you think I was going to? Just let him die? Like hell.” 

Herc scans his face, as if checking his sincerity, as he if he had any goddamn right to doubt that Newt would fight for every single inch of Hermann’s life. Apparently satisfied with what he sees, he nods. “Good.” Then he goes marching off, toward the hospital wing from the looks of it. Checking up on Chuck, Newt would guess. Newt, in turn, strides off to Hermann's room.

And being in that room is like...like when you go to a museum, back when they still had museums and Newt still had time to go to museums, and there would be those rooms fenced off with a velvet rope that were set up like a room would have been in some past time period. And you would stand at the rope and maybe lean over it a bit so you could crane your neck to see into the corners, and you could examine this preserved slice of a time past. A little plaque next to the open wall that dates the room. “Hermann Gottlieb’s room, circa April 2025, pre-Drift.”

Newt has never gone to a museum with Hermann. He wonders what that would be like. Would Hermann like all the historical details, would he put on his stupid glasses and bend his face as close to the displays without touching as he could and scold Newt whenever he got too loud or tried to move Hermann along too quickly? Or would he pretend to be interested but really be bored because the displays had nothing to do with math or physics or space? Oh, god, if only he could have taken Hermann to an air and space museum, that would have been glorious, Hermann would have loved that so much. So serious but so excited all at once, tugging on Newt’s hand, “look at this, Newton, this is a piece of the original shuttle, this is an actual moon rock, this is fascinating, look at this…” If only. 

There is a blazer hanging over the back of the chair at the tiny desk, there are papers neatly laid out on the desk, there is an empty mug that must have once held tea. Hermann hardly ever leaves dirty dishes out. He hates any sort of mess. He must have meant to come back soon. No idea how utterly changed everything would be when he returned. 

The bed is perfectly made, but that’s typical of Hermann. Newt stares at the neat blankets and visualizes curling into a tiny ball in the middle of them. But no. He’s covered in dirt and blood and sweat. Hermann will be angry if he gets all that gross stuff on his bed. He turns away and takes a shower in the tiny, tiny attached bathroom instead. At least as scientists they are granted the luxury of not having to use the communal showers. 

A quick shower. Just enough to rinse his dirty skin and hair. The warm water feels so good that if he were to let himself, he could stay in here forever. So he hurries instead. He has clothes here in Hermann’s room, a drawer of his things, like they were a totally normal couple that keeps a toothbrush - speaking of which, when did he last brush his teeth? - and a drawer at the home of the other, as if that home was not a military-ish dorm room. 

He delays a moment longer by carefully picking out some clothes for Hermann. A nice, warm sweater, a light color so that it isn’t so noticeable how pale Hermann is. Comfortable pants. God, Hermann wears such ugly clothes. Today the ugliness is beautiful beyond words. It’s so perfectly Hermann.

There’s a wall looming over Newt. Best to not look at it yet. He hates walls. He would have cheered when Mutavore broke through the Coastal Wall if it wasn’t for that, well, meaning a shit ton of human fatality.

Okay. Okay. Time to think. Not for too long, who knows how long Hermann will sleep, but for a little bit, Newt needs to _think_. He sits on Hermann’s bed, crawling across it until he’s squarely in the middle, folding his legs so he’s crosslegged, and picks up Hermann’s pillow, squeezing it to his chest. It smells like chalk and tea and soap and ever so faintly like Newt’s hair gel. 

Think. Solutions. There’s gotta be one. There is no problem that doesn’t have a solution, isn’t that what Hermann always says? The world is a series of equations and not a one doesn’t have an answer. This is no different. There is something Newt can do, if only he could focus. He just can’t do that with Hermann before him, thin and pale and far too still as he sleeps. All he can think of then is that he’s going to lose him. Not in the distant future, as he has long known and never properly accepted, but soon. A wall standing over him, or maybe a Breach, vast and incomprehensible, the fear of it gripping his chest with painful prickles that he can’t breathe past- He can’t think like that. And he needs to think. 

He’s a genius. If anyone can figure out how to save Hermann, it’s him. 

He’s always intended to save Hermann, deep down inside of himself, ever since that day Hermann, serious and full of remorse, sat Newt down and explained to him that he was sick, very sick, it may not show yet, but he was...he was going to die eventually. So he would understand perfectly if Newt did not want to embark on a romantic relationship with him, he would not hold that against him. Newt said shut up and kissed him and later he cried and even later he decided that no, Hermann was not going to die eventually. No. And the way his brain works has always been first deciding he’s going to do a thing, and then doing it. Not stopping until he’s done it. He made up his mind that day, only a handful of years ago even though it feels like ancient history, that he was going to find a cure and halt the degeneration. He probably couldn’t reverse it, but he could halt it. Save Hermann. He refused to let himself think of any alternatives. 

Of course, stopping the kaiju was a higher priority. He hated that, but he knew it was true. So it was: Stop the kaiju. Retire to some university somewhere with Herms, one that would let him research whatever he wanted because of course he was the rock star that saved the world. Find the cure. Save Hermann. Live with him the rest of their lives. Together. For decades. They would have decades after they saved the world. 

Clearly, that isn’t going to work anymore. There simply isn’t time. A month - a month a month a _month_ \- is not enough time for even him to find the cure. But. There has to be. There has to be something. He can’t just let Hermann die, he won’t. 

His eyes are stinging again, with tears instead of exhaustion, and no ideas are coming to mind, so he picks up Hermann’s stupid, dorky, perfect clothes and walks back to the infirmary. He takes the dirty mug with him and abandons it at the kitchens on the way. And then he sits in the same spot as before and watches Hermann sleep until his eyes burn only with tiredness. And past that.

 

 

He ends up dozing off at some point during the night, and wakes up cramped and sore the next morning. He can’t remember where he is at first. Confusing blurs of his vague dreams are still swirling in his brain. His apartment he used to have in the States mixing with Hermann’s family home in Germany and a giant, gelatinous ocean of blue goop. The Anteverse. Weirdest part is how it wasn’t even that scary. It felt like home as much as the apartment and the house in Germany.

He blinks and rubs his eyes and peers around the room. There’s almost no lights on, just a dim night light in the corner. It must be early. Feels early. This isn’t Newt’s room, or Hermann’s either. Or the lab. There’s monitors, lit up with jagged lines...and he’s sitting next to a bed...and in that bed. Hermann.

The memories of the past two days slam into him hard. He goes still with his hands over his face. His eyes are raw and puffy after how much he cried yesterday and how little he has slept in...It’s been fucking forever since he’s gotten a good night’s sleep. 

He makes himself look at Hermann. He’s still asleep, on his back, face turned away from Newt. He’s very still. He’s...very still. Newt’s heart leaps into his throat. He’s way too still and no no no there’s still supposed to be time this can’t be _happening_ -

The soft continuous beeping that has been running since before he awoke, so repetitive he had failed to notice it, catches his attention now. He focuses urgently on the monitor. And, yes, fuck, yes, his heart is still beating. It’s weaker than it should be, but it’s there. He’s alive. Just sleeping. Newt rests his face in his hands again for a long moment. 

He sits still for awhile, holding Hermann’s hand and trying to think, but mostly watching him, eyes adjusting to the dim corner light so that the room doesn’t seem dark at all. Newt is so fucking tired. The Drift is really starting to catch up to him. The stress and trauma of the past few weeks, but particularly the past few days, is definitely catching up with him. But he also isn’t confident in his ability to sleep. For one thing, sleeping means not being awake with Hermann. For another...His half dream while he dozed was not so bad, but he strongly suspects he is going to have far more vivid dreams of the Anteverse when he sleeps properly, which is nothing to look forward to. 

Hermann wakes up an hour or two later. He opens his eyes slowly and glances sleepily about the room. He focuses on Newt and starts to smile. Then...Newt can see him remember. The memories hitting him as hard as they did Newt.

He screws his eyes shut and starts to cry. “Oh, god, Newt, n-no-” 

“Oh, Hermann,” Newt whispers immediately, leaning forward. He reaches out for him, but Hermann brings his hands up to his face in a clumsy gesture before Newt can touch him. Closing him out. No. Hiding the vulnerability. He hates to be vulnerable. 

“I’m sorry,” Hermann sobs. “I’m so sorry.” 

He doesn’t know why Hermann is apologizing. For crying? For Drifting? For dying? For having been sick in the first place? But for any of them, all of them, Newt firmly insists, “No, shh, don’t be, don’t apologize,” and grips his shoulder firmly, not letting go until Hermann cries himself out and stops saying “Sorry,” in such a broken voice. 

 

 

As promised, Hermann is allowed to return to his own room that day. There isn’t much they can do for him, so he might as well be somewhere he can be comfortable, at least for now. As a nurse gives him medicine and instructions and unhooks him from the machines, Torres quietly pulls Newt aside and tells him again what’s going to happen. Tremors. Fatigue. Slurred speech. Muscle pain. Difficulty swallowing. Blurred vision. Difficulty moving, particularly walking. Loss of balance. On and on until eventually it starts affecting major functions. Like his breathing.

And she tells Newt what he can do. Not to stop it, of course; but to make it easier. He appreciates that she does it subtly enough that Hermann can’t hear that Newt is being told that Hermann might need help with tasks like showering, and that eventually he will most likely need to be brought back here.

On the other hand, the Medical staff try to make Hermann take a wheelchair back to his room and that is distinctly a mistake. He flushes and insists coldly that he’s still capable of walking. Shoots a glare at Newt and grits between his teeth, “Where is my cane?”

Newt holds it out to him wordlessly - Tendo brought it around at some point during the long wait for Hermann to first wake up - and in exchange takes the bottles (multiple) of pills out of Hermann’s hands. His heart wrings when he sees that one is some seriously hardcore pain meds. 

“Dr. Gottlieb, I’m not sure that’s a good idea-” the nurse says nervously.

“He’ll be fine,” Newt interrupts before Hermann can get going, as he is clearly about to. “And I’ll stick with him. It’ll be okay.” 

Newt looks at Torres and the nurse meaningfully as Hermann scowls ferociously. (He’s only been up a handful of hours but he already has shadows under his eyes, how is that possible?) One of these two things causes the doctors to relent and allow Newt and Hermann to leave squarely on their feet. Hermann can be pretty scary when he glares, especially if you aren’t used to it like Newt.

Chuck’s door is shut when they pass. That’s probably best. The hallways are mostly empty. That’s definitely for the best. Hermann wouldn’t want to be seen like this. He wouldn’t want people to see how heavily he leans on his cane, or that halfway back he’s already shaking and breathing hard, or that once in a while he has to stop and catch his breath, or that Newt follows inches behind, drawn as tense as a guitar string, ready to catch him the instant he starts to fall.

He’s thinking of a few days ago. Three days ago. The helicopter that took them from Otachi and her baby’s corpse dropped them off outside the Dome, and they went tearing through the halls to get to LOCCENT, desperate to be there before the Jaegers tried to go through the Breach, praying to be in time to warn them. Hermann kept stumbling and losing his balance. Newt had to hold him up, one hand pressed to his front against his sweater vest, not even considering that he could go faster if he were to leave Hermann behind. And now he wonders...was Hermann’s poor balance then a symptom of the process of destruction that had already begun in his brain? And throwing up after the Drift, maybe that too. At the time, if Newt had thought of it at all, he’d assumed it was disorientation and exhaustion from the Drift and stress of the past few days. It wasn’t as if ordinarily he was good at running, and he’s always had a bit of a delicate stomach, particularly when under pressure, so it hadn’t jumped out at Newt. But maybe...maybe if he’d realized then, maybe if he’d insisted Hermann go to Medical right away- But no. There was nothing they could do an hour or two later when Hermann collapsed, so there would have been nothing for them to do then either. It was already too late.

And now, Hermann can barely walk, let alone run. Hermann stumbles and stops and Newt jerks forward, certain he’s about to fall, ready to catch him. Instead, Hermann turns and glares at him. 

“I’m _fine_ , Newton. Stop _fussing_.” 

Newt wants to say, “No, you aren’t. You told me you were fine after the Drift and you weren’t. You aren’t.” 

“Okay, dude,” is what he does say. Hermann scowls and carefully starts walking again, not stopping until they reach his room. Newt has the keys.

Hermann leans on the wall as Newt fiddles with the lock to his room. He’s trying to be casual, Newt can tell, but he’s definitely holding himself up on the wall. As soon as they get into the room, he staggers the last few steps and sits down hard on his bed. Newt sets the pills on top of his desk and sits next to him. 

“I...don’t understand how it can have gotten this bad this quickly,” Hermann admits softly once he’s gotten his breath back. 

“Drift is pretty traumatic.” 

“People Drift all the time.”

“Not with a frigging kaiju. Not with a serious degenerative neural disease. That’s hardcore, man, that was fucking hardcore.” 

“...I was only doing what anyone would do.”

“That’s bullshit. There are not very many people brave enough to do what you did. Like. Stacker Pentecost is literally the only other person I can think of.” 

Hermann bows his head. “I’m just glad that...it’s all over.” 

Newt bites his lip hard enough to draw blood. It should all be over. It is for every other damn person in the world. And yet Hermann did so goddamn much, sacrificed so much, gave up on so many dreams - he wanted to be an astrophysicist, for god’s sake - and this is what he gets. 

“Newton?”

“Yeah. I’m, uh, it’s all over now.” 

 

 

Hermann almost chokes once during dinner. _Difficulty swallowing_. Newt wonders how many mini heart-attacks he’ll have before this is all over-

No. No no no no fuck that this isn’t going to be all over he won’t accept this _no_.

 

 

When Newt gets out of the shower that evening, Hermann is lying in bed, staring contemplatively at the ceiling. Newt has to grin at what he’s wearing. 

He has all these god-awful, nerdy as hell pajama sets that he wears to bed. The kind that are made for old people and chartered accountants and are pinstriped and have matching tops and bottoms and collars and buttons and little chest pockets for, Newt doesn’t fucking know, why on earth would anyone need pockets in pajamas? They make Hermann look about sixty and are always either too short or too long in the leg. Newt has many fond memories of trying to have sex with Hermann in those pajama sets and giggling madly as he undid the buttons and tugged down the pants. Cracking relentless jokes. Hermann trying to pretend to be serious and indignant until he broke down in laughter too, tossing his head back and closing his eyes and laughing breathlessly as Newt tickled his thighs and joked about never being able to find his dick in these damn things. God. Newt loves his smile and his laugh so much. He sort of loves the pajamas too. 

But he loves this better, what he’s wearing right now. He loves when Hermann steals Newt’s clothes to wear as pajamas. Today, it’s an old, worn-out band t-shirt, the letters faded so that it looks like “Th B ack Ve et Ra ts.” (“The Back Veet Rats, Newton, what a lovely name for a band, I’m sure you and the other Back Veet Rats were terribly popular, please do tell me more about the Back Veet Rats-”) It isn’t quite long enough for him, so that Newt can catch glimpses of his hipbones over the pajama bottoms he’s wearing. Hermann’s pajama bottoms, striped white and blue and silly next to the t-shirt. They’re also not quite long enough, so that his bony ankles, currently crossed over each other, stick out awkwardly. He looks so good like this, in Newt’s t-shirt, relaxed in bed, flat stomach and perfect hips showing, hair tousled, eyes half shut, so that Newt can’t see the lingering blood ring. 

There’s a tiny bit of his mind piping up to remind Newt that Hermann only steals Newt’s t-shirts when he’s feeling particularly unhappy or unwell and wants the comfort. He doesn’t want to think about it. He wants to memorize this image. He stands in the doorway of the bathroom, water dripping down the back of his neck, and tries to print it on his mind forever. 

Hermann is obviously half asleep, but maybe he can feel Newt watching. He opens his eyes and says lazily, “What?”

“Nothing, I just...I dunno. You’re really hot.”

Hermann snorts.

“I love you,” Newt adds softly. 

There might be a limited amount of times he’ll be able to say that in the future. 

Hermann manages a smile. The first since the sleepy one when he woke up this morning. Newt tries to print that on his memory too, then crosses over to him, flinging himself on the bed. “I love you,” Newt says again, and presses his mouth to Hermann’s as he responds, so he can taste the words on his lips. Memorize this too. His kiss. Tasting like mint. He just brushed his teeth. He kisses softly. (Because harsher movements are already beyond him? No just shut up shut up don’t think.) 

He traces Hermann’s mouth. Draws his lips across his cheeks, tracing the bone sharp just beneath the skin, kissing the crow’s eyes at the corner of his eyes, the laugh lines on his forehead that no one other than Newt would believe are laugh lines. Down his sharp nose, brushing against his mouth again, over his jaw, then tracking down his neck. His collarbone is a delicate, lovely curve of hard bone. When they first got together, Newt kept leaving hickeys there. He loved knowing the marks were hidden under his sweater vests and high-buttoned shirts. Hermann was considerably less subtle about leaving marks on Newt, which Newt found both amusing and enjoyable. 

He drags a hand across Hermann’s torso, under the hem of Newt’s t-shirt, over his stomach, pulling the shirt with him so it bunches under Hermann’s shoulder. Hermann is breathing hard again, but pleasantly this time. His hands are clutching in Newt’s shirt, nails digging into Newt’s back through the fabric. He isn’t hard. Neither is Newt. That’s not what this is. 

His mouth on Hermann’s chest, the pale, smooth skin, impressively hairless, sucking lightly on Hermann’s nipples, hands following the lines of his ribs, his sternum, the little scar under his lowest rib from some unremembered childhood accident, wanting to touch every inch of him, all of his skin, while it’s still there, all of it, touch and kiss and smell, memorize it. Smell will go fast, and the sound of his voice, and the softness of him, and then the precise shade of his hair and eyes and skin, and some day Newt won’t be able to remember this, doing this, shadows of memories only, and then he’ll have lost him,every time he forgets some aspect of Hermann he will lose him and when every  
detail of how he looked and felt and smelled and sounded and tasted is gone, then Newt will have lost him utterly, he’s going to lose Hermann so many times-

“Newton,” Hermann whispers.

He can’t see anymore. That’s no good. He has to see. And he’s crying on Hermann’s stomach, that’s no good either. He has to stop crying. He’s wasting precious time by crying. 

“Newton.” 

The inevitability of these losses is so huge before him, he cannot breathe or think or do _anything_ , he can only lose lose lose.

“I don’t want to,” he sobs. “It’s not fair. We saved the world. It’s supposed to be better now, I can’t lose you, I don’t wanna lose you.”

Hermann is stroking his hair. “I’m sorry, darling.” His careful, ever so slightly shaking fingers through hair that is, for once, not styled, not gelled.

“I need you.” 

“You don’t.”

“I need you,” Newt insists. Why does Hermann have to act so calm? Newt knows he's scared too, why, why is he pretending he isn't afraid, why is he pretending this isn't a loss? To both of them. “You’re, you’re my Drift partner, my fucking copilot, I _need_ you, I c-can’t do this without you.”

“You can.”

“I _can’t_ -”

“You have to. Newton. I, I need you to. To stay here and be alive and keep going. Find a new copilot, even.”

“ _No_.” He shakes his head desperately into Hermann’s stomach. “No. It’s only you. I love you. Hermann, I, I love you, I love you-”

“I love you too, that’s why I need you to...to do this. Keep going. I need to know that you’ll still be okay.” 

“I can’t lose you,” he repeats helplessly. 

“You won’t,” Hermann breathes. “I’ll always be yours. Even when I’m...not here. I’ll be yours. Always yours.” 

 

 

“I want to go to the lab today,” Hermann says after breakfast. He hasn’t eaten much. He doesn’t like breakfast. Normally Newt scolds him for not eating breakfast - he really shouldn’t skip meals, skinny as he is - but today he doesn’t say a word about it. 

“The lab?”

Hermann nods. “I need to adjust my model of the Breach based on the new information we have.” 

Newt stares.

“It is important that information be _preserved_ , Newton-” Hermann starts in his best prissy voice, the one that usually means he is going to go on to rant to Newt about how vital it is to record information, how that is the _heart_ of science, facts and evidence, not feelings and ideas. 

“I know, I know,” Newt says, rolling his eyes. “No need to lecture me.” 

Hermann scowls, a familiar, grumpy expression that makes Newt smile in return. “Well, let’s go then, come on.” 

“Okay, chill out, dude, I’m coming,” Newt says, standing up and watching from the corner of his eyes to see if Hermann needs help up. He doesn’t. 

The walk from their room to the lab seems easier than the walk yesterday. Perhaps just because it’s a much shorter distance. No point in analyzing it.

Much like Hermann’s room earlier, Newt is struck by how unchanged the lab is from how it was before Project Pitfall. Although, one change immediately jumps out at each of them: Newt’s home-made Pons and Drift machine are sitting on a partially cleared worktable on Newt’s side of the lab. He’s not even sure how that got here. Someone must have brought it back after he and Hermann’s (Catastrophic. World-saving.) Drift, he supposes. Newt freezes and stares, ice pouring down his back. Hermann clicks his tongue disapprovingly and without any further reaction limps over to his Breach simulation, sitting down and immediately getting to work. 

Newt forcibly shakes his head and looks away from the machine. Right. Work. He should work too. He should...he should record the stuff he saw in the Drift, the new things he’s learned, yes, that’s important. Also he isn’t quite ready to touch kaiju samples again yet. He sits down at a computer and does his best to focus only on what he can remember of the Drifts with the kaiju, occasionally distracted by fragments of his own or of Hermann’s memories.

After about half an hour of quietly working - or, rather, Newt humming under his breath and Hermann periodically muttering in German at his simulation - Newt suddenly remembers that Hermann is _sick_ and Christ what are they _doing_. He glances over at Hermann, working assiduously at his computer as if nothing was- Oh. That’s what they are doing. They are pretending nothing is wrong. 

Hermann catches him staring. He’s always had a sort of sixth sense of when Newt is staring. Although now it might be remnants of the Drift, keeping them in sync with each other. Or maybe they were Drift Compatible because they already were in sync with each other? Whatever.

“What?” Hermann says irritably when he sees Newt looking at him.

Hermann wants to pretend nothing is wrong. Newt can do that.

“Nothing, just admiring how good the hologram lighting makes your cheekbones looks,” Newt says teasingly. 

Hermann rolls his eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”

“What, c’mon, can’t a man admire how cute his boyfriend is, I mean, what kind of a world are we living in if I can’t tell the man I’m sleeping with that he is super duper cute, that’s like some sort of evil tyrannical cyber-dystopia, Herms, and I will not stand for it-”

Hermann rolls his eyes harder. “Go back to work, idiot.” 

“Love you too,” Newt sings out, and returns to what he was doing. But he keeps an eye on Hermann, after that. 

It’s only about forty minutes later that he notices that Hermann is steadily going paler and blinking too much in the light of the hologram. Newt is already standing when Hermann shuts the program off and squeezes his eyes shut, one hand coming up to rub at his temples. 

“You okay?” Newt says softly. 

“Just...headache,” Hermann grits out. 

The lights might have been hurting his eyes. Or he was working too hard. Or it could just be general pain. His brain is fucked up right now, that probably includes pain receptors. Newt wordlessly leaves the lab to jog back to Hermann’s room and grab the bottle of painkillers and a glass that he fills up with water back in the lab, leaving both on the desk next to Hermann. He opens his eyes to stare at the pills for a long moment, and then he takes one. 

Hermann hates painkillers. Hates anything that interferes with his brain functions. Newt couldn’t even convince him to try weed. And these are serious hardcore painkillers. It’s harder for Newt to focus on his lab work. But. Hermann wants to pretend to be normal. He deserves that, while they still can.

People start dropping by shortly after that. Mako drops in as if she was walking somewhere else and coincidentally passed by. She’s a natural. She sits in the lab for an hour and updates them on Chuck and Raleigh’s condition - Raleigh has been discharged from Medical, Chuck is still bedridden - and asks them about the Drift and only once betrays any sign that she knows something is wrong. She hugs Hermann before she leaves and she briefly takes Newt’s hand. That’s all. Even that, she manages to play off as if it is merely a thank you for the vital information they garnered from the Drift. Hermann looks rather touched. He even smiles. Newt loves both of them with all his heart. 

Tendo is next. He’s not quite as good at being normal as Mako. He chatters away about what will come next for the PPDC and wonders if they will build more Jaegers - an excellent topic of conversation for Hermann - but every now and then he stops abruptly in the middle of the sentence and looks away from Hermann, eyes shining wetly. He has to take a deep breath before he can return to normal. Hermann freezes into stillness every time. Newt glares at Tendo.

Herc is terrible. He drops in and bluntly says, “Flying in some people that might be able to help,” then vanishes again. Newt is pissed. Hermann is expressionless in a bad way. Ten or twenty minutes later, he says, subdued, “I think I’d like to return to my room now. You can stay here, if you like.”

“Nah, dude, I...um, I’m not sure how much more I can do here anyway. I’ll come hang out with you, if, uh, that’s okay.”

“Of course,” Hermann says softly. 

He has to stop and lean on the walls a few times on the way back to their room. 

 

 

They are called down to the Medical Wing the next day. The first specialist is there. He’s spectacularly unhelpful and offers no new information. Hermann barely speaks for several hours afterwards. His fingers tremble when he grips Newt’s hand hard.

 

 

Newt lies in bed next to Hermann in bed that night, talking softly and holding Hermann’s hand, occasionally brushing his lips across the knuckles, until Hermann falls asleep. Newt watches him for a while, three quarters of an hour maybe, to make sure he’s really asleep and because it’s hard to look away from him, then disentangles himself and crawls out of bed. 

It’s not so late. Hermann sleeps a lot lately. Fatigue. He got tired easily before- Just. Before. He got easily tired before too, but usually he ignored it and pushed through. He never slept enough. Now he sleeps early and wakes up late. Newt wonders if it helps. Maybe. Maybe it doesn’t. Torres told Newt that at the end Hermann would most likely fall asleep and not. Wake up again.

Newt thinks again that he looks lovely when he sleeps. His features are naturally sharp, but much of the harshness of his face comes from a combination of wanting to look dignified and mature and of anxiety and stress manifesting as unfriendliness. Those qualities fade in sleep. He looks young. Vulnerable. Kind.

But these days there are also shadows under his eyes that won’t fade and lines of pain around his mouth that never entirely loosen. He’s still pale. Too thin. Wrong. 

Newt tries to ignore those parts. He sweeps Hermann’s hair off his forehead, bends down to kiss the corners of his eyes. Then he creeps quietly from the room. 

The halls are not as crowded as they might be during daylight hours, but there are enough people that Newt catches some odd looks. People wondering why he isn’t with Hermann, probably. It occurs to him that he really has very little idea what is going on with the Shatterdome outside of Hermann. Tendo and Mako mentioned some things, but nothing significant, and it’s probably fair to assume that anything really big or stressful would be kept from them. There surely must be massively important changes going on.

Newt appreciates that he’s just been left alone to deal with Hermann. He can’t handle anything other than that. Godzilla could rise out of the ocean tomorrow and Newt wouldn’t have enough energy left to care.

The lab is dark and quiet other than the hum of certain machines that are never left off. Newt shuts the door and hits the lights. They slowly flick on across the lab, starting on Hermann’s side and working over to Newt’s. He tosses a fond smile at the stupid tape line. All Hermann’s idea of course, from before they even got together and never rescinded. It’s always been amusing to Newt how Hermann can rip him a new one over a kaiju specimen going an inch over the line and then a handful of hours later kiss the living daylights out of Newt. He glances next at Hermann’s chalkboard and ladder, memories flooding him of looking up from dissecting some specimen to see Hermann standing on that ladder, scribbling away, muttering under his breath in German, face pressed so close to the chalkboard that he gets chalk on the tip of his nose.

A few minutes later Newt’s kneeling on the floor and his face is wet. 

Fuck. He has to stop doing this. He’s wasting time with which he could be helping Hermann. Right now...Yeah, okay, even if they manage to halt the degeneration at this point, he’ll still be in pretty rough shape. But he’ll be _alive_ , and he can have a good life. With physical therapy he might even have decent mobility, not that that is completely necessary to live a happy life. A long life, with Newt. Newt will get him a chalkboard that he doesn’t need a ladder for. But none of that will happen if Newt doesn’t hurry the fuck up and find some way to help him. 

He spends hours in his lab that night. Brainstorming, researching, going through every damn thing he has, increasingly desperate as the hours pass and the fatigue catches up to him. He doesn’t expect to find a magical cure in one night, of course not. It’s just, he wants a lead. Something to start with. But he doesn’t have anything helpful in this stupid fucking lab, he has kaiju entrails and uselessly fancy computers and the goddamn piece of trash Pons machine that started this whole fucking thing. This is all Newt’s fault. Maybe if he hadn’t built such a slapdash Pons. Maybe if he hadn’t let Hermann Drift. Maybe if-

He has a Pons machine. 

He has fancy computers. 

And it’s just- It’s all information, right? It’s all just _information_. So maybe he could- Maybe he could!


	2. Darkening At Sundown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fighting and pretending and waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you that believe in souls and the afterlife, it might help if you temporarily suspend your belief in those things for this story, just btw.

Hermann wakes up before him the next day and worriedly asks him - him! - if he’s okay. “You seem really tired, Newton.”

“It’s just. Um. Stress, you know? No worries.” 

“You should sleep longer.” 

Newt sits up and checks the time. “Can’t, Herms, we got another specialist to meet today.”

Hermann frowns. “Oh. Yes. That’s right.”

“Maybe this will go better,” Newt says softly. 

“Maybe,” Hermann mumbles, looking away. 

It doesn’t go better. At one point she makes Hermann attempt to walk without his cane, god alone knows _why_ , and Newt is barely fast enough to catch him before he crashes to the ground. He saves Hermann from the physical pain, but, judging from Hermann’s miserable, scarlet face, not the humiliation. And at the end, after all that, she says she’ll have to “run a few more tests” but “doesn’t think there’s anything to be done.” 

Herc says stubbornly, “The next one will be better-”

“I have no interest in seeing any more specialists,” Hermann growls and storms majestically out of the Medical Wing.

He has to lean on Newt the rest of the way back to the room. 

“Hermann, are you sure?” Newt asks nervously once they are alone again and Hermann is safely seated on the bed, shaking, Newt standing before him.

“Yes,” he spits.

“But- I mean. Maybe they could help. Buy you some time at least-”

“No. I- No.”

“Why-”

“It’s just a waste of time!” he cries. “There’s nothing to be done! I am _dying_ , Newton, and there’s nothing to stop that. I’ve already accepted that, I did years ago! And I don’t want to waste my time and energy on stupid doctors who will only lift our hopes and then destroy them again. I, I want to spend my time with you and the other people I care about.”

“Hermann-” he whispers. He’s. He is tearing apart inside again. “P-please.”

Hermann looks him solidly in the eyes. The blood ring. It’s still there. “I’m sorry, Newton, I truly am, but I...I need you to accept it. There’s very little time left. I can’t, I can’t waste it. This is. This is all I have.”

Newt shakes his head. “No.” Keeps shaking.

“Newt-”

“You always fight. You always fight every fucking thing. You don’t give up on anything. Not the war, not the Jaeger program or PPDC, not me. You fight even when it isn’t fucking necessary but _now_ you’re going to surrender? How can you do that! How can you do that to yourself, how can you do that to me, how can you fucking give up now!”

Hermann looks down at his hands. There is a tremor there that Newt has to admit is not due to emotion. “I’ve known this was coming a long time. And I...I am so very tired,” he says softly.

“You can’t just give up!” Newt shouts, whirling around and storming out of the room. He gets three paces down the hall. Then he spins around again and runs those three steps, flinging himself through the door that he hadn’t bothered to lock, skidding to a stop in front of Hermann.

He looks up at Newt. Newt is in pieces. But Hermann probably is too. 

“I d-don’t, I don’t wanna waste time either. But I’m not gonna give up on you, I will never fucking give up on you. Not ever. I won’t waste time, but I won’t give up. Okay?”

He nods slowly and Newt kneels on the bed next to him and kisses him carefully for at least an hour. 

He spends most of that night in the lab again. 

 

 

The next day they pretend everything is normal again. It’s getting harder. They manage anyway. Hermann makes Newt take him to the lab again and Newt is glad he had the foresight last night to hide the stuff he’s been working on. 

 

 

Newt is getting food for them at lunch when he sees, unexpectedly, Chuck. Not walking; in a wheelchair, pushed by a heavily bandaged Raleigh. He’s surprised both of them aren’t bedbound. Mako told them that Raleigh had been discharged, but Christ, the way he's bandaged and bruised, he sure doesn’t look as if he should have been.

“How’s Hermann?” Chuck asks without preamble. 

“He’s. Um. Okay, considering.”

“I want to see him,” Chuck says, stubborn as if he expects Newt to argue.. 

“Oh. Yeah. That’d be cool. Just…” Newt glances at Raleigh. He still really doesn’t know the Ranger, other than their unfortunate encounter in the elevator and what Mako has said about him. “Be cool, okay? Just act like nothing’s wrong. Don’t get emotional, he hates that, just talk about random shit.” 

Chuck hesitates. “Is he...Is he really…”

Newt doesn’t want him to say the word as little as Chuck seems to want to say it. He turns his face away. “Yeah.” 

Chuck’s lower lip trembles for a second. Newt is violently reminded that the kid is only fucking twenty one years old. He has all these memories of Chuck hanging out in their lab and badgering Hermann for details about coding the Mark I Jaegers. He’d been such an awkward looking teenager, growing too fast, so that he couldn’t seem to remember how long his limbs were and bumped into things all the time. He’d had pimples. It had been a shock when he disappeared into the Jaeger academy and came back a cocky young man. 

Newt always suspected Chuck had a crush on Hermann. Hermann always insisted that was completely ridiculous. But Hermann was always fond of him, just like Newt has always been fond of Mako...and, well, vice versa too. Hermann loves Mako and Newt loves Chuck too. The annoying little brother he never wanted. 

“Right, don’t be emotional,” Raleigh says cheerfully. “I’m sure you can manage that, Chuck, we all know what a repressed Aussie you are.”

“Oi, shut up, Becket,” Chuck growls, and the moment is lost. Newt forces a smile and leads them back to the lab.

“Christ, he’s working?” Chuck mutters when he realizes where they are heading.

“He wants to,” Newt says firmly. “I think it’s good for him. Makes him happy.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” Chuck agrees. 

Hermann is obviously startled when Newt walks in trailing Chuck and Raleigh. But pleased as well. So of course the first thing he says is a stern, “Should you be out of bed yet?”

“Christ, lay off, I’m allowed to move around for short amounts of time,” Chuck grumbles. 

“Don’t worry, I’m supervising him,” Raleigh says lightly. It occurs to Newt that the only other time Hermann and Raleigh have spoken was when Hermann informed Raleigh that Newt was a “kaiju grrroupie.” Newt feels a painful, fond twisting of his heart. It used to bug him so much that Hermann said that. Then, in the Drift, he saw that...after the first few times Hermann used it, it mostly stopped being an insult. It was more like a term of endearment. And he’s always adored the way Hermann rolls his “r”s.

“I’m sure you’ll take good care of him,” Hermann says. It’s layered with all sorts of significance. There’s a noticeable _pause_. Chuck’s lip trembles again. 

“Th-this idiot couldn’t take care of shit,” Chuck forces out. 

“You say to the savior of all our asses.”

“Nah, I was talking to you, not Mako.”

“I- I can’t argue with that.”

“Course you can’t, you can’t hear a negative word against Mako.”

“As you personally know.”

“Look, I apologized for that-”

Newt grins at Hermann, thinking, _they bicker like we do_. From the slight smile tilting Hermann’s lips, he knows he’s thinking the same.

 

 

“He’s nice,” Hermann mumbles that night against Newt’s shoulder. Newt is stroking his hair. 

“Hmm? Raleigh, you mean?”

“Mm. He’ll take care of them. Chuck and Mako both. It’s good.”

“Surprised you didn’t give them the shovel talk.”

“...Not like I could follow through.” 

“Oh. U-um. I...I’ll follow through for you. Kick his ass if he hurts either of them.”

He can feel Hermann’s lips smile against the skin of shoulder. “Of course.”

“Wow, that’s- I could do it. I could take Raleigh Becket.”

“Didn’t say you couldn’t.”

“It was the _tone_.” 

“I didn’t have any tone.”

“You did so.” 

“Go to sleep, Newton.”

“Okay,” he agrees, and waits for Hermann to slip off, then sneaks to the lab again. 

 

 

Sometimes, not sleeping much manifests in Newt as this intense, fizzy sort of energy. Maybe it’s just that he is now at Tendo levels of coffee ingestion. Maybe his brain chemistry is messed up from the lack of proper sleep. Possibly the manic episode he was going through up to Pitfall has yet to end. Either way, the next day in the lab he’s talking a mile a minute about the Hive Mind and cracking jokes about how inconvenient that would be for secret affairs and staying in the closet and trying to imagine how queer kaiju come out to their clones/parents - “The Bible said kaiju and Eve, not kaiju and Ste- Nope, ignore that, that was a terrible pun” - and Hermann’s scolding - “For god’s sake, Newton, please don’t trivialize the monsters that tried to commit xenocide on us” - is a lot less impressive when he’s giggling breathlessly, and it’s-

Perfect.

 

 

One morning, he dozes in Hermann’s bed as Hermann takes a shower. He isn’t awake, but not properly asleep, and thus the sudden crashing sound from the bathroom is enough to jolt him awake. “Hermann!” he shouts, and when a response is not immediately forthcoming, jumps out of bed and crosses the room in a few long strides, heart thudding. 

Hermann is sitting on the floor of the very small shower, clutching the back of his head and gasping. “I, I’m okay,” he gasps as Newt comes in and yanks the frosted glass door open. 

“What happened?” Newt asks, hovering anxiously outside of the shower. 

“I...lost my balance,” he says. Newt’s stomach clenches. 

“Can you stand up?”

He tries. He does. He even almost gets it, and then he sways. Newt dives forward and grabs him as he starts to slip again, but it’s such an awkward position that the best he can do is support Hermann’s weight - too light too light - to the floor of the shower, so that they are both sitting under the spray of water, Newt still in the clothes he was sleeping in. 

“Are you-” he starts.

Hermann’s voice sounds foreign. Cracked and slurred and lost and “I hate this, I hate this so much, I hate this-”

He’s crying. 

The water goes cold so fast in these showers. It’s been such a long time since Newt has taken a long, hot shower. He could turn the water off but he cannot let go of Hermann. He kneels on the floor of the shower and holds Hermann tight, narrow and shaking and naked, trying to put his body between him and the water as he sobs, so that the increasingly cool water pours down his back instead of over Hermann. 

The choked out words taper into sobs, and sobs fade into intermittent judders. Newt dares to pull one hand away and grope for the knob that turns off the water, stiffening when the water flow abruptly stops and icy air hits his wet back. “Hermann,” Newt whispers, and there is never gentle enough, he could not possibly make himself as gentle as Hermann deserves. “Can you stand? If I help you?”

After a long hesitation, Hermann nods against his shoulder. 

Standing up is a nightmare. (This is all a nightmare. Please let this be a nightmare.) They are both wet and if Newt is shivering, Hermann is shaking violently, and the shower stall is tiny, and the tiled floor is deadly slippery, and Newt is simply praying through the longer than it should be process that he does not drop Hermann or hurt him, and Hermann isn’t making a sound so he has no idea how he’s doing on the second part of that. But somehow, eventually, they are both standing on their feet in the tiny shower stall. 

It’s the first time they’ve ever been in the shower together. The showers here in the Dome are really too small for it to be worth it and apparently Hermann finds that particular concept unpleasant, so they have never even tried. Newt hates that this thought flashes through his head for just an instant.

Newt backs out of the shower - carefully, because the door was open all that while, and the whole bathroom is now rather damp - but Hermann makes no move to follow. He stands hunched over in the shower stall, arms wrapped tightly around himself, tears still running unchecked down his face. 

He can. He can handle this. He can do this. Towel on the rack. Wrap it around Hermann. Rub him dry. Lead him out. Okay. Okay. Bed. Newt pulls back the covers and very carefully pushes Hermann down into the bed - Hermann immediately curls up into a ball on his side - covers him up again, grabs the extra blanket Hermann keeps in his closet and tosses that on top. He’s so wet. The water was so freezing that his naturally pale skin looks almost blue and oh god it hurts hurts stop it. Hermann needs you. 

Newt is dripping wet too. He strips off his shirt and boxers - which was all he was wearing anyway - and yanks on the first clean, spare clothes to come to hand. Then he gets into bed too. Hermann hit his head when he fell, he reminds himself, and so he oh so cautiously climbs over Hermann so that he is behind him and can examine the back of his head, running his fingers lightly through the short, dripping hair to find where he struck it. There’s a bump, but nothing too serious. No blood. 

“It’s okay,” Newt says. “You’re okay. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Hermann whispers. 

Newt swallows hard. If he let himself, he could fall apart right now. Instead, he mentally clamps down hard, the way he isn’t used to doing on his emotions, the way he couldn’t for anyone other than Hermann. And all he says is, “Y-yeah. I know. It’s not...not okay at all.” 

“I’m so afraid,” Hermann whispers. He’s still shaking. Maybe because he’s still really wet. Newt did a shit job of drying him off. He presses closer into Hermann. “I don’t. I don’t want this. I h-hate all of this. It’s so- I’m so afraid. I’m such a coward-” 

“No, Herms, no,” Newt interrupts immediately. He tugs on Hermann so that he has to roll over and face Newt. “Seriously, you’re being so brave. And you’re allowed to be scared. You’re allowed to hate this, this is all _awful_ and you deserve better and, god, darling, you are being so strong and brave and you, you really don’t have to be.” 

Hermann never entirely stopped crying from when he started in the shower and several more tears go sliding down his already wet face. “I don’t want to die,” he says, as if it is a shameful confession, a secret he should have kept hidden. “I want to walk and I don’t want to hurt and I d-don’t _want_ to die.” 

Newt tries to stop his own tears. But he can’t. So he wipes away Hermann’s tears with the pad of his thumb and ignores his own. “I’m so sorry, darling, I’m so sorry.” 

“I promised myself I would be brave,” he says in a tiny shadow of a voice. Newt wonders if Hermann feels the same as him, like if you don’t whisper then you’ll scream. “When I found out I was sick...I promised I would be b-brave when this happened. But I...thought I had more time. And it’s so hard.” 

This is so hard. For Newt, this is so hard. How much harder must it be for Hermann?

“I d-don’t want to do this anymore, I’m s-so tired, but I don’t, I don’t want it to end either, I just want...I just want to be _better_ -” His voice cracks into a sob on the last word. “And I, I n-never wanted you to see me like this.”

“Oh, Hermann,” is all Newt can say. He pulls Hermann closer and Hermann buries his wet face in the crook of Newt’s neck. “You are being brave,” Newt murmurs. “You don’t have to be brave, it’s okay if you aren’t, but you’re being so brave. You’re so brave. You’re so brave, darling, I love you so much, you’re so strong and you’re so brave and you saved my life and you saved the world a-and you’re so, you’re so amazing.”

There isn’t enough words. To convey how important he is. There’s isn’t enough, not of anything, not enough words and not enough time and not enough tears to convey the unending grief and fear and pain and injustice.

They don’t pretend everything is normal that day. It’s already impossible. They stay curled up in bed and Newt talks about good memories and eventually Hermann joins in and they both don’t remark on the moments when one or the other starts crying.

Eating is starting to get very difficult for Hermann and Newt is worried but the worry also seems insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

 

 

He spends as much time in the lab as he dares. He even ventures to work on some of the smaller parts of his project when he’s there with Hermann.

 

 

International travel is not an easy thing these days. Newt’s not sure whether the Breach being closed would have made that less or more true. Either way. International trips need to be planned far in advance and a fair amount of money spent and to come to the Pacific Rim a person needs specific permission, and a month - less than - is not enough time to travel from Germany to Hong Kong. It isn’t possible for Hermann’s siblings to come visit. Newt strongly suspects that Hermann is relieved by this. But he calls them all, at least, to explain and say good-bye, and Newt waits out in the hall for several hours until it’s all over. 

All Hermann says about it when he limps heavily into the hall to retrieve Newt is, “My older brother agreed to convey the news to Lars after...I die.” 

“Oh.” 

Talking is difficult too now for Hermann, and considering he just carried out three presumably hard phone calls, Newt agrees calmly when Hermann asks Newt to talk about something unrelated and just let Hermann listen. Newt talks about his college days and his stupid band - “The Back Veet Rats” Hermann croaks with a ghost of a smile - until his mouth is dry and Hermann is smiling properly, and then some more until Hermann is asleep. 

 

 

Some days they stay in the lab, working and bickering until Hermann is too tired - and often, even then, he simply sits at one of his computers and watches Newt - pretending. These days, it’s almost like nothing has changed. On the other hand, there is almost always various people dropping in to say hello or to chat. The lab, after all, is a relatively public place.

Other days, they barely venture out of their rooms. They lay tangled in bed quietly talking, pressed as close together as possible, kissing slowly, memorizing each other’s faces. Newt only leaves the room to get them food. As Hermann gets sicker and sicker, these days happen more and more. 

Newt can’t decide which he likes better. The days in the lab are more like the life he wants. But there are always other people around. The days in their rooms, he can’t pretend nothing is wrong. But it’s also far more intimate.

Either way, he desperately hoards memories. He tries to take pictures at one point, but Hermann is visibly uncomfortable and mumbles, “I don’t want you to remember me like this.”

Newt does want to remember him like this. He wants to remember every aspect of him. But he understands what Hermann means. He stops trying to take photos and instead takes memories, mental snapshots to store in his mind. 

 

 

His lab experiments are not going as smoothly as hoped. Hermann is starting to sleep so much that Newt has loads of time, but he also doesn’t have time, because he needs to finish it before...Before. Not just before. Hermann’s brain is rapidly degrading. So far it’s only affecting his motor functions. But Newt knows that in some advanced cases of this disease, it does spread to cognitive functions, and Newt absolutely needs this to be finished and working before that happens. It’s most likely that the effects to Hermann’s motor functions are so rapid and severe that he will...before his cognitive functions are touched. Still. Newt doesn’t want to run the risk. 

And right now it just isn’t fucking working and he can’t, he can’t do this, he isn’t good enough, this isn’t going to work and this is his only possibility and, no no he’s going to lose him over and over and-

“Newt?”

Newt jumps. Looks up. At the doorway. He would swear he closed it, but it’s partially open now and Tendo is standing there, sort of _looking_ at him.

“W-what? What do you want?” His heart suddenly skips. “D-did something happen?” Oh no he shouldn’t have left Hermann alone, shouldn’t have left his side for a second, what if-

Tendo shakes his head slowly. “No. I just walked by and noticed there was a light on in here. I was going to turn it off, but…” He walks a few steps into the lab, a worried frown on his face as he looks at the junk spread across the table before Newt. “Newt, what are you doing?”

“It’s just. Um. You know. Stuff.”

“I recognize some of this ‘stuff,’” Tendo says quietly. “This wouldn’t happen to be related to Hermann, would it?”

“What, no, course not-”

“This is dangerous shit, you shouldn’t be messing around with it, you could-”

“What, kill him?” Newt says. No. Shouts. He goes from lying to shouting in an instant. “Because that would be awful, of course, if I killed him, because it’s not like he’s, he’s- He’s _dying_ , Tendo, he’s d-dying-”

He hates the pity on Tendo’s face. The kindness. Maybe the Drift is bleeding through into his brain. When Tendo walks into the lab and lays a gentle hand on his shoulder he flinches away and reels back behind the table. Distancing himself. Just like Hermann would. But the stuttered explanations that pour out are all him.

“I have to do something, I can’t just let him die, I have to at least try, there has to be something, I did not save the world for Hermann to just _die_ on me right away. There’s no, there’s no point in having saved it if Hermann isn’t there-”

“You don’t mean that.”

Why does everyone keep saying that? “I do!” he bellows. “I’d let the whole world end to save him!”

Tendo is still far too kind. Far too understanding. He comes around the edge of the table but doesn’t try to close the space. “You wouldn’t, brother. And he wouldn’t let you.” 

Newt puts his hands over his face. That isn’t true. He would. For Hermann.

“He can’t die. I can’t take it if he dies. I can’t- And, if he, if he dies without me even trying something, I will-” His knees are sort of buckling, so he sinks to the ground. “I’ll never forgive myself. If I don’t try, I’m gonna hate myself forever.” 

“It’s not your fault.” From the sound of his voice, he’s kneeling before Newt.

“I shouldn’t have let him Drift.”

“The two of you saved the world.” 

“He’s dying, Tendo. I love him and he’s going to die.” 

“And that won’t be your fault.”

“But I still have to try!” he shouts again. “Don’t you get it! It’s just like with the kaiju, there was no way to win but we still tried! And we won! And this, I can’t win but I still have to fucking try and maybe, just maybe, I’ll win! I’ll save him! I have to try!” 

Tendo sighs. Stands up. Footsteps move a short distance away. Stop. 

“You’ve got these wires connected wrong. And this is the wrong part.”

Newt stiffens and drops his hands. “What?”

“I’m not saying this is a good idea or anything. I’m just...saying.” 

Newt scrambles to his feet. “Can you show as well as say?”

 

 

A few days later, Hermann cannot get out of bed without help, and struggles even with it. He can only talk slowly in short sentences. Newt helps him shower. He chokes on his food. He’s listless all day. The lines on his face mean he’s in pain. 

Curled around him in bed, it takes Newt several attempts before he can make himself say, “I think maybe it’s time you go back to the Medical Wing.”

Hermann’s breathing is starting to sound labored these days. He rolls over slowly, fighting with is body to move. How does it feel for him right now? All the time? Like he’s trapped in the coffin of his own body, like he’s been utterly betrayed, like every instant is a battle? Or is it just drifting away, slowly falling asleep, slowly disappearing? Is he screaming silently the way that Newt is, or is he relieved that the fight is almost over?

“I know,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” Newt whispers, rubbing his arm. 

“Newt. I. I’m s-so scared.” 

Newt squeezes his eyes shut hard. Think about this. Hermann gathered in his arms. Sharp face pressed to his neck. Even the hot tears soaking into his skin are precious. Someday he might not. He will not have this. He’ll lie alone in bed. No skinny form cradled in his arms. The most precious thing in the world lost.

“I know, Herms. Me too. I’m so fucking scared.” 

“I’m sorry I...did this to you.” 

“No, no,” he whispers, shaking his head. “Don’t say that. Stop saying that. I’m not sorry. I could never be sorry, I, this is, I’d rather have this than not to have had you at all, Hermann, I, I’m so glad I met you. I’m so glad I emailed you and that we met and I’m s-so grateful for every stupid fight and every instant we had each other, I-” 

_I feel like I’m saying goodbye and I can’t take it._

“I feel the same,” Hermann whispers. 

_Please don’t say goodbye._

_I can’t stand to never have this again._

 

 

It looms before him. Inescapable now. A wall built in his path. A monster standing over him and reaching out toward him. 

A breach in the world. It waits for him. He gets little flashes of it. But he knows. That he doesn’t really understand.

 _"Some day I want to see one up close and personal."_ Not anymore. He doesn’t want it anymore. Becket was right. He wants to stay here. 

 

 

He’s making progress on his project again but that night he can’t make himself let go of Hermann or get out of bed. This is. This is almost certainly the last time he’ll ever lie in Hermann Gottlieb’s bed and hold him in his arms and kiss his short hair and the corners of his eyes and he needs every single goddamn instant.

 

 

Hermann walked from the Medical Wing to his room. He has to take a wheelchair back to the Medical Wing. Herc must have ordered the hallways cleared or something because they don’t encounter a single goddamn person on the way there. Newt contemplates that complete authoritative power is not always a bad thing. 

There isn’t even anyone in the lobby, including doctors. Newt knows they’ll show up soon. Hermann can’t really eat or drink anymore, he needs an IV, and maybe an oxygen machine for when he struggles more with breathing. But for now, they give them space for Newt to set Hermann up in the small room clearly left for them. Newt fusses and puts a stack of books for Hermann to read on the table next to him (even though they both know his eyesight is deteriorating too badly for him to read), and insists on fetching an extra blanket because Hermann is always too cold and checks to see the pillows are comfortable, and Hermann complains at him and tells him he’s being annoying, and it doesn’t really serve to make them forget that he won’t come home again, but at least it lets them pretend they forget. 

The doctors don’t descend until after they’ve set up. Newt stands helplessly in a corner and, without movement and speech to distract him, has a goddamn hard time not thinking about how all of this is to help Hermann die more comfortably.

It’s really happening. This is happening. 

Newt is so close to being ready. Not tonight. He can’t do it tonight. But...tomorrow night. He might be able to. He has to be able to. 

 

 

Most nights, he works in the lab for hours and then slips back to Hermann an hour or two before the time he expects him to wake and catches at least a REM cycle. He’s been running on one or two REM cycles a day with an occasional longer night - usually, as he expected, punctuated by nightmares, but he just doesn’t fucking care about those when he’s living a nightmare far worse than the Anteverse - for about two and a half weeks now, and before _that_ he was working with only three or four in order to find out as much as he could about the kaiju before Pitfall. 

He barely slept last night, just held Hermann in his arms and watched him. He doesn’t sleep at all tonight. He works in his lab. 

He’s so close to being finished. 

 

 

Chuck has had to stay in Medical all this time, since he’s still pretty fucked up. Newt is fairly certain that the times Chuck has come to visit them in the lab, he was only permitted out for the sake of seeing Hermann. “I want to go visit my dying older brother stand-in who helped to save all our asses at the cost of his own life,” is probably a really good excuse. But now that Hermann is back in the Medical Wing, in the room next to Chuck’s again, visiting is easier. Chuck imperiously orders a doctor to roll his wheelchair into Hermann’s room and sits and talks with Newt and Hermann for a while. 

He’s gotten a lot better at pretending Hermann is okay. Newt can still see the distress in his face. Chuck has always been a bit of an open book. He won’t talk about his _feelings_ , of course, he’s even more emotionally constipated than Hermann, but whatever he is feeling at the moment is always visible on his face. But that’s okay, because Newt is pretty sure that Hermann’s eyesight has gotten so blurry that he can only read someone’s face if they are pretty close, closer than Chuck is, and although Chuck’s lips tremble every time Hermann speaks and his eyes are wet, his voice is perfectly even. 

Hermann sleeps a lot at this stage, drifting in and out of restless naps all day, unable to stay either conscious or asleep for long. The pain, Newt suspects, is the cause for that. Chuck has been sitting with them for about an hour and a half when Hermann slips into a nap. It’s what Newt was waiting for. 

He immediately grabs Chuck’s wheelchair and drags him out into the empty hallway.

“What the hell, Geiszler, lemme go-”

“I need your help.” 

That shuts him up. He looks up at Newt, his blue eyes suddenly wide and vulnerable just like when he was fourteen and would hide in the lab whenever Herc and Scott were deployed and Hermann and Mako were the only people that could ever get him to admit he was scared they wouldn’t come back. “With Hermann?” he asks. 

Newt nods. Makes himself say, “There isn’t long now. You...you know that, right?”

Chuck swallows hard. The wet in his eyes threatens to spill over. “He’s really gonna die.”

“...Yeah. He’s. He’s going to. But I...There might be something I can do.”

The hope on Chuck’s face is terrifying. “I know you wouldn’t just give up,” he says victoriously. “I was gonna fucking kick your ass if you did.”

“I don’t know if it will work,” Newt says quietly. “Nothing like this has ever been tried before. But I gotta try.”

“Yes, you _do_ ,” Chuck says fiercely. Everyone thinks that Chuck and Hermann get along because they are both emotionally closed off, perfectionist control freaks. And that is part of it. But Newt thinks it’s really this: that they are both people that never, ever, give up, that absolutely refuse to accept failure. People that would die to save the world. Because Chuck was willing to die. No one thought they would come back from Pitfall. And Newt isn’t like that. When it comes right down to it, Newt would put his own life over saving the world. If dying was a risk, that’s one thing. He knew Drifting with the kaiju could kill him. But if dying is guaranteed. He wouldn’t do it.

Maybe for Hermann. Maybe he would die for Hermann. He honestly doesn’t know. He hopes he would, because Hermann would die for him, and he hates the thought that he might love Hermann less than Hermann loves him. Hermann deserves to be loved more than anyone else in the entire world.

“What do you need me to do?” Chuck asks. “I’ll do anything.”

Newt smiles painfully at that. “Yeah. I know you would. Means a lot, Chuck. To both of us. Hermann really, he really lo-”

Chuck shakes his head. Not denying it, just unwilling to hear it. “Shut up and tell me what to do.” 

“Okay, okay. Tonight. I’m trying something. And I need privacy. For at least a couple of hours. If any of the doctors catch me at this, they’ll probably try to stop it. So all I need is...I’ll tell you when I’m about to start, and I just need you to keep watch, and if you hear anyone coming, kick up a fuss. Pretend you’re having a heart attack or something, whatever, just give us space.” 

“That’s all?” Chuck asks, a little disappointed perhaps. 

“That’s all. But it’s important.” 

“I can do that,” he says with a grim nod. “You gonna tell me what you’re doin’?”

Newt is terrible at keeping secrets. If he thinks something he has done is cool, he inevitably wants to share it. Wants to tell everyone, show off how impressive he is, be complimented. And this, if this works, will possibly be the greatest thing he has ever done, _including_ Drifting with a kaiju and finding out how to close the Breach. 

“No, I’m not. It’s...I don’t know if this works. I’ll tell you if it works.” 

Chuck scowls, but he hasn’t been raised in the PPDC for nothing. He can take an order, sometimes. “All right, fine. Just let me know when ya need me.” 

“I will. Thanks, Chuck. And...Hermann loves you.”

“Shut up-”

“You’re like family, you and Mako both, you’re family to us.”

“Shut _up_ -”

“And we’re so fucking proud, Hermann is so proud of you. He’d want you to know that.” 

“Shut up, please shut up,” Chuck begs. Sobs. He drops his head into his hands. His shoulders are shaking. “This can’t- He c-can’t do this. This isn’t fair. This isn’t _fair_ , it’s not supposed to be like this, shouldn’t be him, Pentecost either, n-not fair-” 

“I know, I know.” 

“I wanted to save everyone and I fucked up so bad, I, I wanted to save him, both of them, everyone, I failed, that’s all I was good for and I failed-”

“No,” Newt insists. His heart keeps finding new ways to break. “You didn’t, not at all. You saved the world, Chuck. It’s just that...You can’t- You can’t save everyone.” 

Chuck reaches out and grabs Newt’s shirt. He looks up at him, face stained with tears, open and vulnerable and desperate in a way he hasn’t been in a long time. “But you have to save him.”

“I’m gonna try. I’ll try to save him.” And Chuck has no idea how literal that statement is. 

“I love him too,” Chuck says, crumpling again. 

“I know. We know. But you...you should tell him, maybe. Not just yet, but...soon.”

 

 

Newt is back at Hermann’s side when he wakes up, one hand holding his, awkwardly flipping one handed through one of Hermann’s books with the free hand. Hermann would never dream of writing in a book, of course. He’s shouted at Newt for the way that Newt treats books. But Hermann does leave notes in books he likes, on scraps of paper tucked into the pages, recording the quotes he likes and his thoughts about them. It always makes Newt smile. He’s such a fucking nerd. 

He doesn’t notice Hermann has woken up until he says Newt’s name. Just “Newt,” not “Newton.” 

“Oh. Hey, there you are.”

Hermann squints around the room. Newt, without being asked, hands him his glasses and helps him sit up. 

“Chuck is…?”

“Uh, he was, you know, kinda tired.” Emotionally broken down and crying. “I brought him back to his room.”

Hermann frowns. “He’s upset.”

“Yeah, dude, a bit. Reasonably so, I think.” 

“Feel bad,” Hermann mumbles. 

Newt leans forward anxiously. “Is the pain worse?”

“No, I...feel bad ‘bout Chuck…” 

“Oh. Right. Um. That’s…” Newt sighs. He puts down the book so he can stroke Hermann’s hair. “It isn’t like you’re doing this on purpose. He gets that.”

“I know. Still...feel bad.” 

He wishes he could have seen what Hermann would have looked like with this stupid undercut grown out. Hermann would still have always kept it short, of course, but maybe now that the whole war thing is over he would stop insisting on having pseudo-military cut. Although Newt does like petting the shaved parts, so smooth and soft. But a different haircut might suit him better.

“We’re just all going to miss you, Herms.”

Hermann shuts his eyes. The lines in his face are getting deeper. He looks terribly worn out. 

“Is the pain worse?”

After a long moment, there’s a tiny nod. 

There isn’t anything he can do. Not right then. He uses one hand to hold Hermann’s and the other to pet his hair and he talks about unrelated stuff, how much of a brat Chuck was as a kid, how Mako used to refuse to wear any color other than blue so that everyone got in the habit of buying her blue accessories, because of course everyone that met her loved spoiling that solemn little girl. Newt adored shopping for tiny blue hair ties and necklaces and earrings. Hermann always looked deeply confused but very serious about trying to find things. Newt talks about how freaking excited Chuck was when Herc got him Max the bulldog, going around showing the wrinkly puppy to everyone, and he let Newt and Hermann pet the dog and apparently that was quite the honor. On and on, stupid important memories, and Hermann smiles every now and then but the lines of pain don’t fade and there isn’t anything Newt can do.

 

 

Eventually it gets to evening, and Hermann’s hand goes limp in Newt’s, his head lolling on his neck and his breath slowing. He’s always sleeping lightly now - the pain, again - but the constant exhaustion usually keeps him out once he goes to sleep in the evening. Newt clenches his hand tighter, heart suddenly pounding. Now. He has to do it now. He has to get up now and go to the lab and do a few final tweaks, and then he’ll be ready to do it. 

He can’t make himself stand up. The Drift. Must be affecting his brain. Newt is used to doing a thing as soon as he thinks of it, no pausing to consider the consequences. “You are the definition of reckless!” Hermann shouted at him once. It’s Hermann that thinks shit through, weighing cost and benefit to see if a thing should be done. 

But right now all he can think about is that this might not work, and, even worse, it might make Hermann worse. And, yeah, what he said to Tendo is true. Hermann is dying either way, so might as well try, right? But on the other hand...he’s got so little time left. What if he decreases that time? A week or two may not be much, but it’s better than a day. Or nothing. 

But no. He’s thought this through. He’s done research. He’s picked Tendo’s mind, all through that first night and several times since. (He’s pretty sure that Tendo has figured out what he wants to try and is violently trying to pretend he doesn’t know, and he keeps warning Newt this is a bad idea, but he still usually spends at least an hour with Newt every night. Tendo is a really fucking good friend.) He’s fairly sure this won’t make anything worse, regardless of whether it works or not. It shouldn’t be a strain. The machine is supposed to take the brunt of it, not Hermann. 

And a week or two may be better than nothing, but forever is even better, and that’s what he might get if this works. So with that thought in his head, he forces himself to shaking feet - God he’s so tired - and releases Hermann’s hand. He’s lost so much weight that even his hands are starting to get a little skeletal. Newt impulsively takes it again and kisses the knuckles, then delicately puts it down on the bed and resolutely walks out of the room.

Chuck’s door is open, and he’s sitting up and awake in the bed. “Now?” he hisses when Newt walks by.

“Not yet,” Newt answers, pausing in his doorway. “I have to do some shit in the lab and grab some things. Then I’ll come back. I’ll let you know, don’t worry.” 

Chuck nods resolutely. 

“Thanks again.”

“Course.” 

The halls are mostly empty as Newt walks to the lab. He hopes they are even emptier when he’s ready to go. This will be way easier if no one sees him- Oh. 

Tendo is in his lab. Sitting next to his project. Arms folded. “Tonight, huh?”

“How’d you know?” Newt asks weakly. 

“Hermann’s on his last legs and this is almost finished, of course I knew,” he says sharply. “Are you really going to do this?”

“I _have_ to.” 

Tendo sighs and purses his lips. “Fine. I’ll make sure no one sees you bring it to him, then.”

Newt blinks. “Wha- Really? I thought-”

“I care about him too, you know!” Tendo shouts, jumping to his feet. “I’ve been working with Hermann ever since I started in J-tech! He’s one of my best friends, I fucking love him, love both of you, I’m not just gonna sit back and let him die! This, this stupid project, this is an idiotic idea and it isn’t going to work, but it’s the only choice! And I’m so tired of sitting back and watching all the people I care about die, so fuck that, I’m helping you! I’ve been helping! And fuck you for thinking I wouldn’t!”

Newt looks down at his feet. He’s impressed to discover that he isn’t too tired to feel shame. “Yeah. Right. Of course. I’m sorry. I...You’ve been helping a lot. I couldn’t have done this without you.”

“Damn straight,” he snaps.

“Thank you, Tendo.” 

“You’re fucking welcome. Now let’s finish this bastard off and go save your boyfriend.” 

With Tendo helping, the last touches are finished in less than an hour. It’s a lot of gear. Newt is being way more careful this time, and nothing like this has ever been done before. That amounts to a ton of carefully attached, ungraceful tech. It no longer obviously looks as if it’s made out of trash, at least.

“I’d feel more comfortable if we were using official stuff,” Tendo mumbles as they delicately load it onto a cart and cover it with a sheet just in case they do run into anyone. 

“Too bad it’s all on the bottom of the fucking ocean, blown to bits.” 

They both sigh. “I think we’re as ready to go as we’re gonna get,” Tendo says after an unhappy pause.

Newt looks around last time to make sure nothing has been forgotten. “Yeah, I think so...So. Um. Time to go. Go check if there’s anyone nearby.”

Tendo pokes his head out the door and looks up and down the hall. “We’re good.” He proceeds out and Newt follows after, pushing the cart. Tendo walks ahead of him to the next corner and peers around that. And that’s how they move through the whole of the Dome, Tendo ahead of Newt checking for people, telling him whether to stop or go. They manage to make it to the hospital wing that way, unseen. 

“I gotta go in first,” Newt tells Tendo, slipping past him. He goes to Chuck’s room first. Chuck is in the exact same alert position.

“Now?”

“Yeah. Also. Tendo is helping me. So don’t mind if you see him.” 

Chuck nods tensely. 

He goes to Hermann’s room next, to check that Hermann is still absolutely asleep. He’s fairly certain this will work better if Hermann is asleep. His mind will be more relaxed, for one thing; for another, he’s fairly certain that Hermann would absolutely never agree to this. Normally Newt is the kind of guy that’s all about consent, but this is one case where he’s going to act first and ask for permission later. 

_You don’t just get to die on me like that, Herms._

Newt flicks on the small lamp on the bedside table, then heads back to Tendo and waves him down the hall. He starts at the sight of Chuck and scrambles for an explanation before Newt reassures him, “He’s helping. Chuck is our sentry.” 

“Good thinking,” Tendo mutters. 

“Yeah, I’m not completely an idiot.” 

Tendo doesn’t answer. He’s stopped in the doorway to Hermann’s room, staring at the bed. Newt knows what he’s seeing. Hermann, too small in the bed, shadowed eyes, hollow cheeks. Dying. “Christ,” he says in a small voice. “Can we really do this?”

Newt clenches his hands into fists. “Don’t, just, don’t fucking think about that. We have to do this, therefore we can do it.” 

Tendo doesn’t move. “Do you think he’d even want this?” he whispers. 

“Look, if you don’t wanna go any further, that’s fine. You’ve helped enough. I can do the rest.”

Tendo finally looks at Newt and moves past the threshold. “No. No, I’ll help.” 

“Good,” Newt says, and pulls the cart of equipment into the room, to the bedside, and tugs the sheet off. 

The biggest thing on the cart is Newt’s Pons machine. He’s been working on it the last several weeks, upgrading. It’s now a far superior model to the shitty thing he and Hermann used to Drift with the kaiju. There’s a shit load of wires. There’s a converter/recording device/there-isn’t-really-a-word-for-this that Newt started but definitely wouldn’t have been able to complete without Tendo’s help. There’s the biggest fucking hard drive Newt could find amongst all of Hermann’s sci fi computers. These days, something like that holds an incomprehensibly large amount of information. He and Tendo have considered carefully, and they are pretty sure it’ll be enough. 

The idea isn’t that complicated, really. He wants to save Hermann. Literally. Save him. 

Because the Drift, right, it’s a way of digitally sharing someone’s personality. And in the end, everything is just data. So Newt thinks maybe - _maybe_ \- you could use the Drift to, well, record someone’s personality, and then if you saved that information...that would be them. 

There’s all sorts of objections, of course, not least of which is the concept of the soul. It’s an excellent thing that Newt is an atheist and doesn’t believe in souls, or else that could be a serious issue. Thoughts, memories, that’s what makes a person up, if you ask him. Hermann agrees, or else that might also bother him. 

Although. This might prove them wrong. Even if this does work, even if they do _save_ Hermann’s personality and even if they can then access those memories, it still might not be Hermann. There might be some vital part of his personality missing. 

As well as that. He’ll only be thoughts. His body will still die, here, in the physical world. There is no way of preventing that. He’s going to die. Newt is simply hoping that even after he dies there will still be some form of him left. He can work with that, he can find something to do with that. He doesn’t know what yet, he isn’t thinking that far ahead. Just this, for now. Seeing if he can preserve personality, that’s all he can focus on. As to whether he can, there’s no way to know without trying.

He’s scared that the Drift will make Hermann worse. One Drift killed him. Another could kill him faster. But he’s hoping that what made the previous Drift so deadly was the presence of the kaiju. That’s an immense strain on a human brain. Newt’s healthy - neuroatypical as fuck, but still healthy - brain could take the strain with only a seizure or two, but it was different for Hermann’s already extremely damaged brain. Besides, that was an extremely active Drift, Newt diving into the Hive Mind and Hermann anchoring him down to Earth and sorting through the information Newt found. But this Drift, this shouldn’t be any sort of burden. He doesn’t have to do anything, he just needs to be, and then hopefully the converter will take the information provided by the Drift, turn it into hard data - he’ll be all numbers, Hermann would love that - and store that being into the hard drive. It shouldn’t be difficult. He shouldn’t even be able to notice it’s going on. But Newt is still scared. His hands shake as he picks up the Pons and very carefully settles it over Hermann’s head, praying it doesn’t wake him. 

Tendo is fussing with the other parts of their set up, turning on all that needs to be turned on, preparing the machine that activates the Drift. Maybe purposely giving Newt a second to stroke Hermann’s cheek and try again - maybe for the last time - to memorize his face. But finally Tendo murmurs, “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Newt says in a voice calmer than he feels. 

“Okay,” Tendo says. “Activating Drift.”

Newt flinches, remembering the last time he was involved in a Drift. The shocking rush of his and Hermann’s memories, the feeling of both shrinking and expanding, the alien pain of encountering the kaiju’s mind. 

Turns out it’s a lot less dramatic from the outside. Hermann sort of shivers then relaxes back into bed. His eyes dart under his lids in a way that resembles REM. Other than that and the soft hum of the machines, there’s nothing to signify that anything is happening. 

“Now we wait,” Tendo says. “Long as we dare. I think a couple of hours ought to do it.” 

“Yeah,” Newt says, and sags down onto the bed, sitting next to Hermann. He picks up his hand again. He’s been holding Hermann’s hand so much lately. He numbly considers the fact that even if this works, it’s entirely possible he’ll never get to hold Hermann’s hand again. Thoughts don’t have a hand to hold. “Thank you again, Tendo.”

“No problem.” 

They sit in silence for the next five hours. With very little ceremony, they end the Drift and turn off all the machines. Pack up. Tell Chuck that it’s over. “Did it work?” he asks urgently, the most terrible hope on his face.

“I don’t know yet,” Newt says. He’s so tired. 

They bring everything back to the lab without incident. “Do you wanna check?” Tendo says tentatively.

Newt shakes his head. “No. Not until...after.” It won’t make any difference either way. If it doesn’t work, he’ll have no idea what’s wrong and no way to fix it. All he’ll have is despair knowing that he failed. This way, he at least gets to have a little hope in Hermann’s last days, and he knows he can’t struggle through this without hope.

“Okay,” Tendo agrees softly, and they go their separate ways, Tendo to his room, Newt to Hermann. He manages to squeeze in bed next to Hermann, but he can’t fall asleep, wondering if it worked, wondering if he made Hermann worse. 

 

 

The first thing he says to Hermann when he wakes up the next day is a forcedly casual, “How ya feeling?”

Hermann shifts around thoughtfully. “Little better today.”

Newt’s face splits into a relieved smile. Not worse. “That’s great!” 

“Weird dreams last night.”

“Oh. Strange,” Newt says, looking anywhere but Hermann’s face.

 

 

Newt sleeps for nine hours that night, wrapped around Hermann. He’s going to spend every second at Hermann’s side from now on.


	3. Facing Into A New Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Goodbyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains panic attacks, a brief scene that involves throwing up, (those last two are both in the third section), and intense grief. 
> 
> Once again, the poem that I quote heavily in this chapter and that the fic title and chapter titles are from is Pablo Neruda's [Barcarole](http://poempandora.blogspot.com/2010/10/pablo-neruda-barcarole.html), _not my own_. The other poem referenced with the line "the center cannot hold" is Yeats's _The Second Coming_. 
> 
> Please remember that I have promised a happy ending.

Hermann can still walk a little. Not much, only a few paces, but he hates to stay in bed all day, so a few times a day Newt helps him out of bed and supports him in a couple of laps around the room and then sits him down in Newt’s chair. Newt sits crosslegged on the bed. Or, when Hermann is feeling a little stronger, they go over to Chuck’s room, or out into the lobby to sit and talk with Tendo and Mako and Raleigh and Herc, when he can spare the time to drop by. All of them are busy, other than Chuck, but between the five of them there is usually someone to visit every morning and afternoon. When Hermann can’t leave the room, they come visit him there, but Newt can tell that Hermann doesn’t like that as much, doesn’t like sitting in bed as if he were an invalid. (He is an invalid, but he hates that.) He still insists on putting clothes on every day instead of just staying in pajamas, and tries to do as much of everything by himself as he can. The pain of watching him struggle to do things that were easy for him only a month ago is one that fades surprisingly quickly. 

No. That isn’t accurate. It doesn’t fade. Newt gets used to it. 

The second day after Newt’s attempt to save him, in the afternoon, after he wakes up from another quick, restless nap and manages to convey to Newt that he wants to get up - he can only speak short sentences now, a handful of words at a time, but Newt’s really good at figuring out what he wants to say - and sit in Newt’s chair, he takes Newt’s hand, tugging in a slightly demanding way.

“Hmm, what?” Newt asks, then grins saucily at the quirk of Hermann’s eyebrows. “Aw, you want a kiss, Hermie?

Hermann rolls his eyes. Newt pretends not to notice and leans forward to kiss him, chastely pressing his lips to Hermann’s chapped ones. It obviously wasn’t what Hermann meant, but he pushes into it anyway. (Newt wonders if he always thinks, _this could be the last time_ too, or if that is just Newt.)

He tugs again on Newt’s wrist when Newt leans back, and holds Newt’s hand up. He shakes from the strain. His hands are always trembling now. Hermann taps on Newt’s fingernails. They are bitten to the quick these days and mostly undecorated except for a few chips of black paint from the last time he painted them, before the Drift. Biting and picking at his nails was always Hermann’s bad habit. Newt must have picked it up in the Drift. 

“Oh. Yeah. Guess I’ve been kinda...stressed.”

A nod. Meaning: _Yes, I know, I don’t blame you_. Meaning: _That was not his point_.

Hermann swallows thickly. “Nail polish.” 

“Nail polish?” Newt echoes.

Hermann nods. 

Newt starts to smile. “You wanna? Paint our nails? Really?”

Nod. Affirmation. “Be fun.” 

“Yeah!” Newt says, a full out grin now, possibly the most sincere smile he has had since Hermann grabbed his shoulder in LOCCENT. “That’d be awesome! I just gotta grab my polish, be back in five- You okay? For me to leave?”

An impatient nod this time. _Newton, don’t be ridiculous, I’ll be fine. Stop fussing_. Newt hears Hermann’s meaning sometimes so clearly that he wonders if they are ghost Drifting. It reminds him of being a kid and tying cans to strings to use as makeshift telephones 

“Okay, okay, I know. Be back soon!” 

He almost skips through the hallways, giddy at the thought of doing something nice and silly like this. Newt has enjoyed painting his nails since university, when he started doing it as an act of rebellion, then realized he genuinely likes how it looks. He’d been so excited the first time he persuaded Hermann into letting him do his. And this is perfect for right now. Fun and relaxing but also easy. He’s already planning what colors to use on Hermann before he even gets to his room and pulls out his small box of precious nail polishes, and as he walks back to the Hospital Wing he’s sorting through and trying to pick between the colors he has. 

Mako is in Hermann’s room when he gets back, perched on the edge of the bed. She looks up with a polite smile that turns into a real one when she sees what Newt is holding. Or maybe it’s because Newt is smiling. Either way. 

“You are painting your nails?” she asks. “Do you mind if I…?”

“No, that would be great!” Newt says, glancing at Hermann to check he agrees. He smiles and nods. 

Mako’s eyes sparkle. She looks tired, Newt notes, has for the last several days, and older than she is, but now at the thought of a manicure she looks like a girl once again as she should. “Wait one moment, I will come back,” she promises and bounces off the bed and out of the room. 

Newt sits down in front of Hermann and starts pulling out the colors he was considering as he waits. Mostly blues and purples and greens, those cool colors suit Hermann best, but all vivid and bright, and of course the silver polish with the stars because now he just thinks of that as being Hermann’s polish. It suits him so perfectly. 

(He’ll never see the stars again - shut _up_.)

He’s narrowed it down to two colors, a tropical shade of teal and a royal purple, by the time that Mako gets back, holding her own container of polishes and trailed after by Raleigh and Chuck. Raleigh hesitates in the doorway, as if a little uncertain as to whether he should be there too, but Newt wordlessly runs into the lobby to grab more chairs, Raleigh smiling and helping him when he sees Newt hauling the chairs. Chuck, still being confined to the wheelchair, does not need a chair. As soon as Raleigh sits down, Mako grabs his right hand and splays his fingers across her lap. Chuck grins and does the same to Raleigh’s other hand.

They have a manicure party. It’s completely ridiculous, but that is what it is. Newt sits crosslegged on the chair and paints Hermann’s nails turquoise with one purple accent nail. Accent nails, of course, are so 2012, but Newt doesn’t really give a damn. He’s always liked any sort of pattern that gives you an excuse to use more than one color.Hermann used to remark that he could tell when Newt was in a good mood, because he would paint his nails in a rainbow. (“ _Also, I can tell because you always make your mood_ abundantly _clear to those around you, Newton, particularly if it is a bad mood_ -”) Raleigh sits carefully still as Mako and Chuck paint his nails. Mako is using bright blue and Chuck is a metallic green. Mako’s strokes are easily neat and perfect; Chuck is deeply focused and yet gets polish all over Raleigh’s fingers. The two young Rangers chatter and bicker the whole while. Raleigh switches his attention between them, face as completely adoring as a teenager who writes the name of their crush repeatedly in a notebook. 

Newt’s favorite part of it all is the way that Hermann watches the three with his eyes crinkled into a gentle smile. 

“What color do I paint my nails?” he asks Hermann when he’s done carefully layering the star polish over the teal and purple. 

It is of course entirely coincidental that Mako and Chuck go quiet at that moment so that Hermann doesn’t have to strain to speak up. 

“Green.”

“Dark or bright?”

“Bright.” 

Newt nods seriously and considers the options. He has three shades of green. The dark one is obviously out, but there are two lighter shades and he can’t decide which…

“The one that’s…” Hermann coughs. “Like...your eyes.” 

Newt smiles warmly. His heart tears into more pieces. It’s just confetti now, confetti fluttering in his chest. “I know the one.”

That time Hermann let Newt paint his nails. Newt had said, “What color do you want?” and Hermann had looked at the box full of options totally baffled and answered, “I’ve no clue. You pick.” And then, as Newt carefully dug through the various colors, finally settling on blue, Hermann had picked up and examined each reject as if it was some sort of mysterious relic. One of the lighter shades of green, the one that is a sort of grassy color, he had put next to Newt’s face and laughed and said, “This is the color of your eyes.” 

“What! No, it isn’t!” Newt had protested. “My eyes are blue! Or gray, I guess.”

Hermann cocked his head and considered thoughtfully. “No, I’m sure they’re green. I remember that from the first time we met, I couldn’t believe how green your eyes were.”

“Oh my god, you’re so gay,” Newt said to hide the fact he was blushing. Hermann had noticed his eyes then? Hermann had thought that was so important that he had mentally remarked upon it and _remembered_ it, even years later?

“Oh, shut up and paint my nails already, honestly.” 

Newt is sure they’re both thinking of that now. He pats Hermann’s hand and sets about painting his own abused nails grass green. Mako and Chuck resume arguing gently, now about whether they should paint Chuck’s nails and what color they should be. 

“You can’t paint everything blue, Mako-”

“You make everything Striker Eureka colors so I can make it all blue-” 

“I like this sparkly one,” Raleigh interjects. 

“Yeah, course you do,” Chuck snorts.

“That one is no good for Chuck,” Mako insists.

“Yeah, it’d be totally daft for me. Would work for you, though, Maks.” 

“I think it’s cute,” Raleigh mumbles. 

Newt and Hermann exchange amused glances. “Don’t bicker, children, I will turn this car around,” Newt says loudly, and laughs at the insulted expressions that are immediately sent his way by all three. “Just do blue and green nails. That way you’ve got both of your colors. Or turquoise. Something like that.”

Chuck considers this. “Nah. I want black.” 

“Stubborn brat,” Newt mutters. 

Hermann laughs softly. It seems to fill up the whole room, his laugh, so that everyone automatically smiles in response. Hermann’s smile has always been surprisingly infectious. Maybe it’s just that it’s so unexpected, that this uptight, sweater-vest wearing nerd would have such a bright smile, one that fills up his whole face. Such a dorky smile too, the way that it scrunches up his eyes so that he manages to actually look like the “XD” emoticon. Whatever it is, in Newt’s experience, it’s hard to not smile back on the rare occasions that Hermann flashes a smile, and this is no exception. 

Even if everyone’s smiles are also tinged with desperate sadness. Newt hopes that Hermann’s eyesight has gotten bad enough that he can’t see the fearful grief even as he hopes that he can see the smiles of most of the people that are most important to him in the world. 

 

 

Hermann’s tired when everyone leaves. From the way he immediately sags, Newt knows that he was pretending to be stronger than he was for the last bit of their impromptu manicure party. Newt has to take most of his weight in getting him back into bed. It isn't much weight.

“That was fun, right?” he asks, climbing in next to him. 

Hermann nods sleepily. He’s still smiling. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Newt says without thinking. As if they have time.

The silence after hurts. 

“You want me to read to you?” Newt says. Too loud. His throat is closing up. The words sound thick. His eyes are blurring. 

Hermann nods. So Newt reads to him. A book about space. Doesn’t move to wipe the tears spilling down his cheeks because he can see past them and if he moves then Hermann will know he’s crying, and right now he’s facing away from Newt so maybe he doesn’t know somehow, maybe he doesn’t hear Newt’s breath hitching, or maybe he grants him the pity of pretending not to notice, just as Newt pretends not to notice Hermann’s shoulders shaking with silent sobs either. 

The words on the page stop making sense so Newt says, “I love you,” over and over again instead and Hermann says “Yes,” and that means _Me too_. 

 

 

Hermann’s heart stops the next day. 

He’s lying there in bed half-asleep as Newt chatters about something inconsequential, and then he makes a strange sound and jerks and his eyes snap open and then roll up and one of the machines lets out a long, sustained beep. Things happen fast after that.

Newt jumps to his feet and shouts. “Hermann!” or “Help!” or perhaps just a shout. He can’t remember. He can’t. Doctors come rushing in before he has even finished shouting. Newt is crowded back into a corner. This can’t. Orders are flying through the air. “Coding-” “A shot of epi-” Please. 

There’s no oxygen in the room.

Please, this can’t be happening. He isn’t ready yet. This can’t happen. 

Then the long beep of the heart monitor suddenly jumps back to short, periodic beeps. “We’ve got him.” Hermann moans. The doctors are talking, talking to Hermann maybe, but Newt can’t seem to focus, can’t hear anything, just ringing in his ears and his heart thudding so fast it’s more like drumbeats. He’s staring at Hermann’s white white white face. He feels sick. 

Only then, after an indeterminate time period, when the movements of the doctors has slowed, Hermann croaks out, “Next time. DNR,” and Newt does hear that. 

DNR. 

Back before the war, Newt was seeing this person. Nat. Nat and Newt, Newt ‘n’ Nat, everyone always said, it was so annoying. One night he and Nat were lazing around Newt’s apartment and watching Netflix. They couldn’t decide what to watch, so Nat suggested Grey’s Anatomy. They had heard it was stupid and wanted to check out just how stupid. He and Nat watched the first two episodes, and Nat laughed it off as dumb and soapy, and Newt agreed, and then later when he was alone he watched half of the first season in a day and continued to binge watch it whenever he had some free time. 

If you were to ask him then why he liked the show, he would have loudly insisted it was just because everyone was so hot. Like, Christina Yang, have you seen her, or Alex Karev? He was half in love with both of them. (Which now is like, fuck, he’s always had a thing for gorgeous, arrogant, emotionally distant genius types.) But the truth was that he actually liked the show. Sure, there was no way that much shit could ever happen to one group of people (he thought _then_ ), and the medical stuff was probably mostly bullshit, but the story lines were compelling and the characters were complex and it was really cool to watch a show with such a diverse cast. 

And Newt learned some shit. Medical stuff. Some of it wasn’t true but some of it was. Newt knows what DNR means. He’s thinking of Izzy. Mark Sloan. He actually fucking _cried_ over Mark Sloan.

He knows what DNR means.

It means Do Not Resuscitate. It means that if Hermann’s heart stops again they just let it. It means he’s going to die. 

“Newt.”

All the doctors are gone. Newt didn’t notice them leaving. He’s kneeling on the floor in the corner, and he doesn’t remember that happening either. He’s also hyperventilating. That isn’t fair. Panic attacks are Hermann’s thing, not his. Maybe he should start counting the Fibonacci Sequence like Hermann does whenever he has a panic attack.

“Newt. Please.” 

Hermann is going to die he’s going to die he’s going to die his heart just stopped he is going to die Newt is just going to have to watch him die and if it didn’t work then there will be nothing nothing forever just a vast emptiness where Hermann is supposed to be and never again not ever again will Newt hear him say-

“Newton.”

“I’m gonna throw up,” he gasps, and staggers to his feet and out of the room. There’s a bathroom out in the lobby of the Medical Wing for when people have to wait for someone who is being treated, and he manages to make it there barely in time. He throws up until his stomach is empty and then dry heaves for several minutes for good measure, the image of Hermann’s eyes rolling back in his head repeating in his brain over and over and over and over- 

When he starts to properly come back to himself, he’s curled up on the ground with his face pressed to the cool tile. There are tears streaking his face and his head hurts and his mouth tastes vile and his stomach muscles hurt too and his heart is surely physically in pieces because that is the only thing that explains how his chest manages to feel empty and too full and burning all at once. 

He can’t do this. He thought he could do this but he can’t. He thought his extra measures would be enough to give him the strength to sit at Hermann’s side and watch him die but he was wrong. He isn’t strong enough. He’s never been strong enough. Hermann is the one who is strong, Newt is just arrogance and bravado. All a front. He is a coward and he is weak and he can’t sit here and watch the most important person in the world deteriorate into nothing. He can’t do this. He has to get out of here. Go away somewhere. Go home. He wants to go home.

But when he tries to visualize home the only thing that comes to mind is Hermann. Hermann in Newt’s bed. Hermann in his own room. Memories not his own of Hermann in his childhood bedroom back in Germany and memories that aren’t real of Hermann in Newt’s own childhood room. 

And if he runs away now then Hermann will be all alone and that is so fucking wrong- 

He’s alone right now-

He just had a fucking heart attack or something like that and Newt left him alone-

Even though it is impossible and he isn’t strong enough. He stands up. He rinses his mouth out several times. He splashes cool water on his face. He walks across the lobby on violently shaking legs. He returns to Hermann’s room. 

Hermann squints at him with wet eyes. His voice is a thin rasp. “Newt...I don’t…” _I don’t want to be a vegetable. I don’t want to cling on when there’s nothing to cling to. I don’t want to live like this anymore. I don’t want to hurt you._

“I know,” Newt says dully and sits next to him in his chair and holds his hand. It’s all waiting now. Waiting to crash into the wall, to fall into the Breach, to be torn apart by the monsters. 

 

 

Hermann sleeps for a long time. Having a heart attack is probably exhausting. The doctors removed his heart monitor when Newt wasn’t paying attention. Possibly Hermann requested they do, possibly they just didn’t need it anymore what with...the DNR order. 

It’s fucking terrifying for him to sleep when Newt can’t hear the beeping of the monitor. He keeps his thumb over Hermann’s wrist the entire time so that he can feel his weak, sluggish pulse.

He wakes up in the evening, after Raleigh has quietly come and gone to leave Newt a tray of food. Someone must have told him what happened because he does not even attempt to talk to Newt. Newt picks at the food. His stomach is still too upset to eat. He abandons it when he sees that Hermann is awake. 

“Newt.” Hermann’s voice has faded to a thread. 

“Mm?”

“Tomorrow. I want...t’say goodbye. Everyone.” 

How can this keep hurting so much? Doesn’t the pain plateau at a certain point?

It’s logical to assume it will hurt worse after he dies but it simply isn’t possible because this is already too painful to bear.

“Please.” 

He nods and keeps nodding. Throat too thick to force out more than, “Okay.” 

“Love you.”

And how much can a person even possibly cry? He bows his head over Hermann’s hand. “I love you. I love you. I love you s-so fucking much, Hermann, god, I love you.” 

He doesn’t sleep that night, because to sleep would be to take his hand off Hermann’s pulse. He thinks he probably won’t sleep much more until...it’s all over. 

 

 

Herc first. Newt catches him about to go into a video conference with some important diplomats Newt does not give a single fuck about. When Newt emptily tells him Hermann wants to say good-bye, Herc says, “Yeah, fuck them,” and follows after Newt to the Medical Wing. Newt mentally vows never to call him a fascist again. 

“He can’t talk very well,” Newt tells Herc softly. “Just. Uh. Be patient.”

Herc nods. Newt doesn’t follow him into the room. Hermann told him he wants to do this alone. Herc comes out about ten minutes later red-eyed and claps Newt on the shoulder before walking away. 

Raleigh after that. Newt finds him in the cafeteria. There must be something in Newt’s face because everyone he walks past in the crowded halls goes silent and stricken. Raleigh’s goodbye takes half an hour and his face is coated with tears when he walks out. He hugs Newt. Newt usually enjoys hugs but he’s too wrecked today to do much more than say, “Thanks.” 

Then Tendo. Takes an hour. Newt sits on the floor outside the door with his back to the wall and is physically incapable of thinking. Tendo opens the door at the end of it on the trail end of a sentence. “...of him, don’t worry, Herms.” He’s smiling cheerfully even as tears run down his cheeks. 

Mako. Hour and a half. She’s composed when she emerges but as soon as the door shuts she takes off running down the hallway and out of the Medical Wing. She’s fast. Young. Newt manages to summon up the thought that he hopes Raleigh was waiting for her. She shouldn’t be alone. 

Last of all is Chuck. It’s afternoon at this point. Herc appears out of nowhere to wait in the hall with Newt, which is good because when the door opens Chuck is absolutely a sobbing mess. Not quietly crying, but loud, painful sobs ripping from his chest. His father silently embraces him and Chuck clutches desperately. Newt leaves them there in the hall to go into the room.

Hermann is utterly calm. Newt was expecting him to be. His face is dry and his eyes are clear. His body may be falling apart but it’s clear that his mind is still sharp as ever. 

Newt slips into bed next to him. “You aren’t allowed to say good-bye to me.”

Hermann collapses into tears that easily. “I. Don’t. Want. To. Go.” 

So don’t. Just stop it. Stop it right fucking now stop dying stop it stop it stop it. Don’t leave me. Don’t go. Don’t say good-bye.

 

 

Maybe it was the strain of talking so much. But the next day Hermann’s voice is pretty much completely gone. He manages to whisper “Yes,” and “No,” and “Newt,” and “Love,” but that’s all. 

Newt can’t stop thinking about how fucked up that is. 

They both talk a lot. (Talked.) Newt chatters away to absolutely anyone and Hermann generally reserves his long-winded rants for people he knows well, but they both talk a lot. Their job even kind of requires it. They’ve always needed to make presentations about what they are working on currently to various military and governmental officials.

And the thing was, Hermann was better at that. Newt loves to talk about this work, but he gets too excited and gets ahead of himself and goes on tangents and uses weird metaphors and shouts a lot. Hermann, on the other hand, speaks in paced tones and a crisp voice and has visual aids. He’s good at presenting. He doesn’t think he is; he thinks he’s shit at anything connected to human interaction. But that’s only true for small talk and so on, talking to people he doesn’t know or people he doesn’t like or people that don’t get him. When it’s something official, he’s excellent at it. For all that Newt would make fun of him and call him pretentious for the shit he says -

And what the fuck is all that “Politics and poetry and promises, these are all lies,” or whatever it was he said? Hermann hates politics, Newt knows that, anyone with Lars for a father would hate politics, but Newt knows for a fact that he has a book of Pablo Neruda poems under his bed, or, well, now it’s in the stack of books at his bedside. What’s that one phrase? “Planets of throaty silver.” Hermann gets misty eyed whenever he reads that. Maybe Hermann thinks that’s a lie, but Newt doubts it. Or if he does think they are lies, then he certainly enjoys those lies.

\- So yeah, Newt calls him pretentious, but he knows that Hermann is an excellent lecturer. He wanted to be a professor when he was younger. He’d have been so good at that. Newt can just see him up at a pulpit in front of a lecture room full of attentive young minds, blackboards at his back, speaking in a clear voice. At least half of the class would be in love with him.

So it’s fucking bullshit that now. He can’t even talk. Newt is losing Hermann’s voice already. 

“Want me to read to you?” 

A tiny shadow of a “Yes.”

Newt pulls out the Pablo Neruda book, paging through until he finds the right poem. _Barcarole_. 

“If only you would touch my heart…”

He found the book of Pablo Neruda poems because they were fucking in Hermann’s room and being very silly about it and giggling breathlessly and rolling around and Newt actually fell off the bed. He was lying on the floor laughing with his boxers pulled halfway down his thighs, and he happened to look to the side, under the bed. The slim book standing up in between neat rows of boxes caught his attention immediately. Hermann blushed - more - when Newt sat up holding it and dramatically read the title - “ _The Essential Neruda_ , oh my god,” - out loud. 

“I always knew you were a softie under all the layers of sweater vests and prickle!” Newt crowed. Hermann snatched it out of his hands. 

“I am certainly not!”

“Are so!” Newt insisted, climbing back on the bed and shoving Hermann down and kissing him firmly before slyly adding, “I find that very sexy.” 

And later that night. They lay in bed naked together, Newt on his back, Hermann propped up on his elbows. He traced Newt’s tattoos with one hand and used the other to hold the book open and read from it to Newt. _This_ poem that Newt is now reading out to Hermann. Newt had closed his eyes then and listened to how lovely the words sounded, soft and warm and passionate in Hermann’s crisp accent. They don’t sound the same in Newt’s voice now.

“Like a long absence, like a sudden bell-”

And back then he’d wanted to kiss the words out of his mouth, find out how they tasted, but he hadn’t wanted to interrupt. 

“The sea doles out the sound of the heart-” 

He’d opened his eyes again to watch Hermann’s brown eyes intent on the page and then smiling at Newt.

“Raining, darkening on sundown, on a lonely coast:”

He had thought it was a sad poem, but oh so lovely. The sadness a part of it’s loveliness. And he’d felt safe to feel a sadness that was not his.

Now the sadness is vast and dangerous and looming and it spills out of his eyes and into the words.

“No question that night falls-”

Hermann had paused there - the next lines were his favorite, he admitted later - breathing deep. Inhaling the poem. He looked almost a stranger like that, but also like he was more purely himself than Newt had ever seen, and so beautiful. Newt had thought it hurt how much he loved him.

“And its mournful blue of the flags of shipwrecks  
peoples itself with planets of throaty silver…”

 

 

A wire snaps.

It’s night and Newt is sleeping lightly in the uncomfortable chair and a wire snaps. He wakes immediately. Terrified. Something is missing. 

“Hermann-”

It’s impossibly silent in the room. And empty. Cold. 

He reaches out desperately, encountering skin. “Hermann!” He blinks until sleep is cleared from his eyes and he can see the still form before him. Incredibly, inhumanly still. No. 

His hands shake on Hermann’s neck and that’s the reason he can’t find a pulse, because he’s shaking too hard, the only possible reason, and if he could just make his hands stay still then he would find the pulse and Hermann would wake up and be irritated with Newt for waking him. 

“Hermann, please.”

His hands are holding on his throat but where is the pulse, where, where is it, no, why is it so empty in him, why is it so dark, there’s something missing.

“No, no, Hermann, _no_ -” 

The wire doesn’t lead to anywhere anymore and he hadn’t known it was there before but it _was_ and where did it _go_ -

“Hermann, please, please, no, wake up-”

He can’t find the pulse so now he’s shaking his shoulders and begging louder and louder and Hermann’s eyes are closed and he looks so peaceful and he’s just sleeping. He’s just sleeping. But he isn’t breathing. Newt’s not ready he needs more time still please god oh no no.

“Dr. Geiszler, stop it, please, he’s gone-”

There’s a scream building in his chest but he can’t let it out. Hermann would hate a fuss. He stops shaking him but he doesn’t let go either because Hermann is going to wake up in just a second and he’ll need Newt to be there he’ll be so scared if Newt isn’t there-

“Newt, come away.”

Someone turned on the light at some point so he can see Hermann’s face perfectly and he looks so still and peaceful and beautiful. Newt’s never understood how people could think he wasn’t good-looking. He’s perfect. 

Hermann please stop it please wake up please don’t do this-

There are arms around him and someone is gently but firmly dragging him away and he’s pleading with them to stop because he has to stay at Hermann’s side, don’t they know that, he belongs with Hermann always, why won’t he just wake up?

And the door shuts and he can’t see Hermann anymore and the only thing he can think is NO a single long NO that goes on forever in his brain.

NO

Tendo is there somehow now holding him and Chuck and Mako and Raleigh too and everyone is crying, even Mako.

NO

“I felt him die, Tendo, I felt it, I felt him die, he’s not there anymore, where did he go, where did he _go_ -”

NO.

 

 

Hermann said, “I’ll go with you.”

And that is how it’s supposed to be. They’re supposed to go with each other. How could he. How could he go somewhere Newt can’t follow?

Newt is supposed to go with him but he doesn’t know where he _went_.

I’ll go with you, Hermann, you just have to tell me where to go. 

 

 

Newt wakes up an indeterminate amount of time later in his own bed. His own room. He doesn’t understand why on earth he’s there. He should be with Hermann.

When he stands up, his vision momentarily rushes black. It clears away into a pounding headache. His eyes hurt too. His legs are trembling. He must have fallen asleep here but he doesn’t know why when he’d so much rather sleep at Hermann’s side, even if it is a lot less comfortable. 

He’s forgetting something but he doesn’t know what. And something is missing, something hugely important like a limb or something that like that, but he doesn’t know what that is either and he’s refusing to think about it. 

It must be the dead of night. The halls are completely abandoned and dim as he stumbles down to the Medical Wing. He’s so tired and he just wants to lay down but it’s important he keep moving. If he stops, something terrible will happen. He’ll remember something terrible. 

The Medical Wing is empty too but Newt tiptoes. Just...because. He can’t be caught, that is important too. 

Chuck’s door is closed and Newt slides quietly by it. He thinks Chuck probably isn’t in his room tonight but he doesn’t know why he thinks that and he refuses to examine the thought any closer.

He stops in front of Hermann’s door. His legs are shaking worse, and it’s gotten worse and spread, so that his hand trembles violently as he lays it on the door handle. He can’t make himself turn it. 

He wants to see Hermann so badly. So he opens the door after all. 

The room. 

Is empty. 

The bed is empty.

It’s dark and cold and the bed is freshly made and it’s empty. Hermann’s things are all in a box.

Newt’s knees give way. 

The wire snapped. The connection broke. The center cannot hold. Except no, that’s Yeats, wrong poem. Neruda is:

“If only you would call…  
Someone would come, someone would come.”

But he screams in his mind for Hermann and there is just _nothing_ and nothing and nothing and he does not come. 

Because he’s dead. 

His mind screams _NO_ again but it cannot block out that fact.

 

 

Someone does come after about an hour and things are said near him and then Tendo is there leading him back to his room and Newt goes unquestioningly with him. 

 

 

The funeral is awful. Newt is having trouble with units of time, so he’s not sure precisely how much later it is. Only a day or two. At some point - probably before the Drift, when he found out he was getting worse - Hermann had made all the arrangements and specified what he wanted, so Newt doesn’t have to do a whole hell of a lot. He puts on a black suit, the simple, not-flashy one that Hermann liked. He redoes the grassy green coat of nail polish, a layer of sparkling stars over it. He writes about fifty different drafts of a eulogy before he admits that it’s impossible to get it right and accepts good enough. He makes himself actually go to the funeral instead of curling up in a tiny ball under his blankets as he would like to. That is the limit of his contributions.

It’s a small funeral, that’s the best to say of it. Only Shatterdome staff, and even then, only a select group of the staff. No viewing of the body, and Newt can’t decide if that’s good or not. He doesn’t want to see Hermann like that and Hermann wouldn’t want to be seen like that. But Newt has a desperate, burning desire to know if the nail polish is still there. 

The service is non-denominational and Newt still doesn’t bother to listen to the service. A bunch of shit about the afterlife, whatever. No way Hermann approved _that_. Neither of them believed in the afterlife. Newt because he’s an optimistic atheist and thinks there is no god or afterlife and that’s great because it means that there is no omnipotent force allowing or, worse, causing horrible things like the kaiju (or _this_ ) to happen. Hermann because he believes in god but not religion and thinks that some mysterious being created the universe and set it into motion and then left and that doesn’t really leave space for an afterlife. 

Believed. Thought. 

Newt’s too emotionally drained to be nervous when it’s time for him to go up before everyone and read the eulogy. In fact, he almost misses his cue. Herc has to nudge him, and he says “Oh!” too loudly and almost trips on his way to the pulpit. And yet this does not ruin his eulogy. It was terrible already.

He _knows_ it’s important that he convey what Hermann was. How brave and strong and brilliant and complex and kind and passionate. How much he meant to Newt and to others. How determined and willing he was to do whatever it took to save the world.

He also knows he’s completely incapable of conveying all that, so even as he relays stories of their years of working together, tells one or two funny stories because he supposes that is what you do in eulogy, says some sentimental bullshit that Hermann would probably hate, and desperately tries to convey how, how _important_ he was...he knows it isn’t enough. 

The only part of his eulogy that counts for a damn thing is at the end, where he clears his throat and says loudly, “Hermann Gottlieb was a rock star.” 

 

 

Chuck corners him in the reception afterwards. He’s on his own feet, unsteady as fuck and leaning on a crutch and trailed after by a concerned looking Raleigh, but still standing.

“It didn’t work?” he whispers urgently. He didn’t cry throughout the funeral. Raleigh did. Mako wiped away only two tears. “What you tried. It didn’t work?”

“I don’t know yet,” he says. “I’ll get back to you.” He walks away from Chuck and out of the reception. 

 

 

He waits until nightfall. When the halls are clear. And he walks through them alone to the lab. He’s half expecting Tendo to be waiting there. 

But he isn’t.

Newt picks the computer of Hermann’s that he is most familiar with. He isn’t really sure how this is going to work, but hypothetically, he’ll plug the drive that they downloaded Hermann’s Drift onto, and he can open that up onto the computer and...what? Communicate via typing? Maybe the speaker functions will read out with Hermann’s voice? That sounds like all sorts of sci-fi bullshit, but if anyone was capable of, like, integrating with a computer and taking control of it, Newt thinks it would be the person who is responsible of the majority of the coding for the Mark I Jaegers. 

So, feeling like there should be more ceremony to it, more than just him attaching the drive with shaking fingers and booting it up, he starts the program. 

At first he just waits. Hoping that whatever vestige of Hermann he saved will take control. But he waits for half an hour and nothing is happening other than him starting to panic, so then he tries stuff. 

He fiddles with the program at first. It yields nothing and he starts getting stupid, turning it off and on, typing HELLO into word documents and into the drive and just onto the background with nothing open, shouting “Hermann!” at the screen, begging.

Begging please Hermann please this has to work I need you and this is the only thing left and you have to be there please please please-

And there’s _nothing_. He opens his eyes and looks at it and there is just nothing, he Drifted with Hermann and there was this whole other shining complex of a person right beside him and even after the Drift was over he could still feel that there connected by a wire and he could look whenever he wants and now he looks and there is only emptiness a huge vast loss looming eternally over him and all that will _ever_ be there is emptiness and he will never hear Hermann’s voice over again. Never touch him. Look into his brown eyes. Kiss him. Make him laugh. Be scolded by him. 

He pounds on the keyboard. He types Hermann’s name. He shouts. He unplugs the drive and plugs it into a second computer and then a third and he tries the hologram simulator but it only reveals floating motes of light, essentially nothing nothing nothing and he’s thinking oh god _please_ I know I don’t believe in you but please give me this one thing I deserve this one thing please please Hermann please don’t be gone don’t be _gone_ -

He’s crying in the lab begging for something that does not _exist_ from the computer and Hermann and god and he knows he failed and this means, this means Hermann is truly gone. 

“Newt.”

He turns to look up at the smeary blur that is Tendo. “It didn’t work. He’s gone.”

“I know.”

“W-what?”

“I already checked. Before he, uh...I just...I couldn’t tell you. I wanted to leave you those last few days. I’m so...I’m so sorry, Newt. I’m so sorry.” 

He should be angry that Tendo checked without him and lied to him but he’s too torn apart and empty inside for that. His head hurts so much. He’s so tired. Of course he checked. Of course it didn't work. 

“Let me bring you back to your room.”

Newt picks up the hard drive, and, cradling it against his heart, follows Tendo back to his room. 

The hard drive is shoved deep under his bed where he will only see it if he looks for it.


	4. Like a Long Absence, Like a Sudden Bell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lost and found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Mild suicidal ideation in this chapter. 
> 
> The origami section is based on a headcanon of [genuisbee's](http://geniusbee.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Once again, the quoted poem is not mine, it's Pablo Neruda's Barcarole.

Newt wakes up a few hours later sweating but also shivering, the room bending weirdly around him. He feels like he doesn’t fit into his own skin and maybe that’s why his head is splitting open to let him out and that’s good, he needs to get out, he needs to follow Hermann and go with him wherever he went except Newt doesn’t believe in the afterlife so that means he didn’t go anywhere.

He’s not sure if he’s asleep or dreaming but the walls are glowing and there are hundreds of kaiju eyes watching vibrant blue and his head hurts so bad and why is it so hot and where is Hermann. Someone is saying his name.

“Christ, he’s burning up-” 

That would be nice. To burn up and turn to ashes and dissolve on the wind float in the sky in space the void of the night the planets of throaty silver and where Hermann is supposed to be there is just a huge black hole so maybe that means he is in space and Hermann would love that so much and maybe if he fell apart into the sky he could go with Hermann. 

But then someone puts something cool on his aching head and that feels so good that he decides he doesn’t want to burn up after all. 

He wishes the kaiju would stop looking at him. It makes him feel sick. 

There’s this smell in his nose and he recognizes it and it makes him think of crying and snapping wires and he’s going to throw up. 

 

 

After a day or two, the fever fades enough that Newt stops seeing kaiju eyes and silver planets and is coherent enough to understand that he’s sick. He’s in the Med Wing, although he doesn’t really remember how that happened. Apparently Tendo came around to check on him the morning after the incident in the lab and found him feverish and hallucinating and somehow or other managed to get him here, where they had sense enough to put him on the opposite side of where Hermann’s room had been.

It’s not exactly a shock that he’s sick - fever, headache, puking his guts up - considering how hard he’s pushed himself the last month or more. Still, a doctor, one Newt doesn’t recognize, firmly reassures him that it’s only that fatigue wrecked his immune system and left him open to illness, not any unexpected side effect of his kaiju Drift. Rest and relaxation and antibiotics should make him fine in a few days.

Newt nods and tries not to throw up again, and as soon as he is left alone in the hospital room he stumbles to his feet and staggers out of the Medical Wing, supporting himself on the wall, because if he spends one more goddamn second in this room that smells like the worst month of his life, he is going to fucking _scream_ and not stop. 

He doesn’t make it real far. He’s not even halfway back to his room before his knees give way and he sinks down to the floor, shaking violently with the fever. His whole body aches except for his head which has gone past aching into murderously painful. Kaiju eyes are popping out into the wall again. He prefers it when the stars orbit his head. 

He isn’t entirely sure if it’s a hallucination or not when a startled voice says, “Newt?” But he looks up and Raleigh is standing over him and he looks pretty normal. Raleigh shaped and sized. No kaiju bits. Probably real. 

“Hi,” Newt croaks. “How are you.” He has a sudden mad urge to giggle. God he feels like shit. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be in the Medical Wing?” Raleigh asks, looking very anxious, because he’s Raleigh. And it’s funny because the first time Newt met him he thought Raleigh was all macho Ranger asshole, so many Rangers are fucking assholes, and he hated him, but really Raleigh is like, like, a golden retriever in a knit sweater. So that whole time they coulda stuck Mako in Lady Danger with a golden retriever and that would have worked just as well. That’s so funny. 

“Did you feel it when your brother died?” Newt asks. He can hear Hermann’s voice say _Newton!_ scoldingly. _That is extremely rude! Have you no manners?_ But it isn’t really Hermann because Hermann died and Newt failed him. “I don’t understand how you could have got back into Lady Danger.” 

“You’re really sick. I should take you back.”

“No fucking duh I’m sick. But, like, how could you get back into that Jaeger when you felt your brother die there, because I, I can’t do it, I can’t even be near the place I felt Hermann die, I really can’t do that.” 

Raleigh stares at him. Newt wonders if Mako likes him because he has blue eyes and that’s Mako’s favorite color. Chuck has blue eyes too. Hermann had brown eyes and they looked like chocolate and sunlight.

Then Raleigh sighs and bends over and kinda grabs at Newt and hauls him up, as easily if he was a kitten. Newt tries to help but his legs are made out of jello. 

“I’ll take you to your room.”

Newt leans on him. He’s all big and sturdy and stuff. He pats his arm. “Good boy.” 

“Don’t throw up on me.”

“Okay.” 

“And I’m gonna tell the doctors where you went to.” 

“Mmkay.”

“Don’t go to sleep on me either.” 

“Mmhmm.” 

“...It gets better. I promise. It always hurts, but it gets better.”

Newt doesn’t respond to that one. 

 

 

It takes him a week to get better. A week of fever and headaches and eating only mild food and having the most incredibly weird dreams of his life, some of which are positively terrifying. He’s sure that at least is an aftereffect of the Drift. 

The worst part is now how scary the dreams are, not that he wakes up shaking and sweating and sick. It’s that he keeps waking up and having an instant where he doesn’t remember that Hermann is dead. He rolls over to tell Hermann about his latest weird dream and maybe be comforted a little bit, Hermann petting his hair and assuring him he’s fine, it’s okay now; and the bed is empty and then he does remember and every fucking time it hurts so bad that he wants to scream. Sometimes he does. He presses his face into his pillow and screams until his throat is raw. 

 

 

And then he has to get up and go to the very empty lab because it's been a month and a lot of shit he really needs to have done got put to the side. He gets in the habit of loudly playing music. Ukrainian Hard House. 

 

 

Newt has always tended more towards having mania than depressive episodes. He does have both, of course, thus the "bi" in "bipolar", but the mania is more common and generally longer lasting. He was pretty manic for the whole last bit of the war. He’s even sorta good at coping with the mania. He definitely prefers it. 

_This_ is the worst depressive episode he’s ever had. It just goes on and on. He has days where everything seems violently pointless. The war is over. They beat the kaiju. And, sure, there’s still a possibility they could come back, and it’s still important they know as much about the kaiju as they can and he’s still the foremost kaiju expert in the world, and the PPDC successfully closing the Breach means he’s no longer viewed as being just a crackpot kaiju groupie, and a shit ton of stuff has built up that he really needs to do. But without the immediate goal of closing the Breach and without Hermann working at his side and pointing out his mistakes with a sneer and pretending to scowl (but really smiling) when Newt does something brilliant, it seems so _pointless_.

There’s days where he can’t stop crying. He’ll be working listlessly on some samples and he’ll look over and see Hermann’s chalkboard - Newt flipped out when someone tried to remove it and no one has tried since - still covered with his writing and dusty fingerprints and seconds later he’s sobbing. He’ll do something and imagine Hermann scolding him and bam, tears. He’ll catch the scent of tea. Sometimes it won’t even be anything in particular, he’ll just _feel_ the black hole where Hermann used to be and drown in the loneliness and the tears. 

And there’s days where he’s angry and those are usually better days. He rages at Hermann and at the kaiju and at the PPDC and at the whole fucking unfair universe. He sings along to the Ukrainian Hard House at the top of his lungs. Hermann should have told him he was worse and he shouldn’t have done the Drift, he should have let Newt fry his brains out alone. And the fucking kaiju, they ruined so much and they just _had_ to take Hermann too, didn’t they? The PPDC pushed Hermann into working so that he made himself sicker than he would have been. The universe let all of this happen, the war and the Drift and Hermann getting worse and Hermann getting sick in the first place. But worst of all is Newt, who let Hermann Drift, who wasn’t strong enough to protect him from the strain of it, who failed to save Hermann, who is fine while Hermann is. Dead. Who dares to keep on living, day after day, when he is the one that should be ash and Hermann should be here-

The days of fury lead naturally into the days where he is consumed by guilt. He failed. He failed Hermann, he failed everyone. He’s been studying the kaiju ever since they appeared, how could it possibly have taken him twelve fucking years to realize that they were bioengineered or that all he needed to do was Drift with one? He could have done that years ago, and then the Breach could have been closed before Hermann even got properly sick. He could have saved so many people, if he hadn’t been such an idiot, not just Hermann, but all those Rangers, Yancy Becket, all the people that just died in Hong Kong and Sydney, all of those attacks, god, he has no right to keep living, not when he is such a monumental failure, a complete waste of space, utter trash, he should just- He should just go find Tendo before he does something stupid, because his lab is full of really shiny scalpels and he would never do that, honest, he wouldn’t, that’s not how you react to someone dying and Hermann would never forgive him, but, well, he’s fucking _mentally ill_ and grieving, and even the great genius Newton Geiszler cannot magically make that go away, and Tendo just accepts it when Newt tells him that he really needs to not be alone for a couple of hours. 

There’s lots of days where it’s almost impossible to drag himself out of bed. Sometimes he can motivate himself with work or trying to act okay for everyone that’s worrying about him - and everyone is obviously worrying - or by imagining Hermann chastising him. Other days, he doesn’t bother. He’s being allowed to get away with a lot of shit in the wake of what happened. (Haha, wake, isn’t that funny?) And there are plenty of other days where he can’t sleep and thus works through the night, so he thinks he deserves a couple of days of lying curled up on Hermann’s bed under a pile of his blankets, inhaling the precious smell of chalk and tea. 

Every single day, he hates himself. 

He thinks about the last time he had a depressive episode. It was after the PPDC went rogue, but only just after. Before Hermann had started to get worse, he’s fairly sure. Newt hadn’t been nearly as numbly despairing as he is now, but he’d definitely had a few days where he absolutely couldn’t get out of bed. 

It always surprised him how nice Hermann was when he had these episodes. He didn’t anticipate much sympathy. If anything, he wouldn’t have thought Hermann had the patience for it. But instead, Hermann was soft and gentle and far more profuse with kind words and compliments than was ordinary for him. He was usually more of one for leaving his feelings unspoken, showing them through small acts. But there would be times when Newt would be lying silently in as small of a ball as he could make himself into, certain that he was the most pathetic human being in the world and that Hermann either hated him or would get annoyed with his behavior soon and start hating him; and then Hermann would sit next to him and pet his hair and assure Newt that he was brilliant and good and strong and that Hermann loved him. It didn’t magically make Newt better, because that’s not how that works, but it sure as fuck didn’t make him worse. And although Hermann usually tried to motivate Newt to get up and do things, he also didn’t get angry even when Newt couldn’t do shit.

This last time he felt like that, there was one Saturday morning where Newt had already come to the conclusion that today was going to be wasted. He had his face pressed into the pillow so that Hermann couldn’t see him hating himself, and Hermann was sitting next to him, not saying anything, just being there. Newt made the mistake of saying, “I don’t get why you put up with me being like this.” 

Hermann clicked his tongue, a little irritated. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because it’s annoying. And stupid.”

“It isn’t stupid. I understand how you feel.”

“How can you possibly understand-” 

Newt stopped talking when he felt the weight of the bed shift. Hermann standing up. Newt peeled his face off the pillow to look up at him, scared he’d finally pushed too hard.

Hermann was looking at him with that superior expression that usually meant, “I know so much better than you do, Newton.” But his voice was patient and kind when he said, “Newton, I’ve struggled with severe anxiety since I was in high school and I have a terminal illness. Do you really think I don’t understand what depression feels like?”

“Oh,” Newt whispered. Then he pulled Hermann back into bed and made him stay there all day cuddling Newt. It was a Saturday, they could afford some time off. 

Now, he wants that more than anything in the world. He closes his eyes and tries to remember how it felt, but it’s been nearly two months and he’s already starting to forget the sound of his voice and the touch of his skin and he’s losing Hermann _again_.

 

 

A not inconsiderable part of Newt and Hermann’s adult lives have been spent in Shatterdomes and the various branches of the Jaeger Academy. As a result, neither of them has a lot of material possessions. Only as much as can be easily moved or fit into one of the small Shatterdome assigned rooms. As K-Science, they get slightly larger rooms...but only slightly. 

So Newt doesn’t have a lot to do in terms of distributing Hermann’s belongings. Hermann’s will dictates that most of his stuff is left to Newt anyway. (Newt hadn’t known Hermann was doing that. But they’ve been together for years now. It shouldn’t surprise him.) There’s some money in a bank account, saved up from years with the PPDC, mostly useless considering that the PPDC provides shelter and food. There’s the stuff in his room. Instead of doing anything with that, Newt leaves it where it is and moves his own belongings into Hermann’s room. He can’t bear sleeping alone in his own bed anymore. 

He’s alone no matter where he sleeps, but it’s a tiny bit better in Hermann’s room, for some reason. 

A little unexpectedly, there are small things left to everyone Hermann cared about that Newt has to see to distributing. Personal effects, all of it. Letters for his siblings as well as some family photographs and other family memorabilia. Newt boxes it up and ships it to them. He has still never personally met any of Hermann’s siblings, although he has talked to Karla on skype. 

There are also letters for various people about the Shatterdomes. Tendo offers to let Newt read his, and Newt firmly refuses. He just. Can’t.

Tendo is also given a notebook full of numbers and equations. Newt doesn’t know what it is, but Tendo opens it and gasps and immediately tears up. 

“It’s some of his original coding for the Mark I Jaegers,” Tendo whispers, reverently tracing the scribbled numbers and words. “This is...this is fucking historical shit, Newt, this is _priceless_.” 

Newt remembers the first time Hermann and Tendo met. Or, well, not exactly; Hermann and Tendo had been in contact with each other for a while. Tendo was one of the top J-technicians and Hermann was one of the people who worked on designing the first Jaegers, so yeah, the two communicated about that sort of shit, back even when Newt and Hermann were still only writing to each other. Newt forgets that sometimes. But, anyway, he was there the first time that Hermann and Tendo met in person. It was about half a year after Newt and Hermann started working together in Hong Kong, when they still were acting like they hated each other’s guts and were refusing to admit that there was _something_ there between them. And when Newt saw the way that Tendo’s eyes sparkled admiringly at talking to Hermann Gottlieb, historic coder of the first Jaegers, he’d felt almost sick with jealousy. It was one of the things that had forced him to admit he had feelings for Hermann, you know, beyond hating him. 

“He wanted you to have it.” 

“Thank you,” Tendo breathes sincerely, and Newt’s throat is all clogged up again but if it wasn’t he’d say, “Don’t thank _me_.”

Hermann must have gone about doing all of this well before Pitfall, because there are letters for both Herc Hansen and Stacker Pentecost. Newt doesn’t know what to do with Pentecost’s letter, so he gives it to Mako. There’s no letter for Raleigh, and Newt feels kinda bad about that, but Raleigh seems to understand. They didn’t even know him then. It’s not any sort of insult. 

There are also letters for the Kaidanovskys and the Wei Tang triplets. Newt has even less idea of what to do with that. He ends up sneaking into their respective rooms, which have been left as they were, and leaving the letters under the pillows. It feels like an immensely stupid gesture. 

For Mako, there’s a book of origami instructions. Like, a really nice one. Pre-war. The sort of thing you can’t really find anymore. It’s in beautiful condition. Hermann always took good care of his belongings. There’s also a precious collection of origami paper, all in shades of blue. Mako takes it from him with shaking hands and just _stares_ at it. Doesn’t even move to wipe away the tears trailing slowly down her face. 

She was really shy when she was younger, still pretty traumatized by what happened to her family. Newt won her over by being loud and friendly and talking about anime, but for a while the sterner, more distant Hermann seemed to scare her. But then one day...she was in the lab chatting to Newt, interrogating him about kaiju, and he’d been called out for a bit and had to leave her with Hermann. When he came back, Hermann had taken out this book and his collection of origami paper, and he and Mako were bent over a clean workstation, carefully folding paper. Hermann liked fiddly things like that to do with his hands, helped him calm down with his anxiety, but that day Newt knew he’d done it purely for Mako. She was completely absorbed in it. After that...they got along well after that. 

“I hope you knew,” Newt says carefully, “That you were always like family. To both of us. And we were really proud of you.”

She nods. “For me too,” she whispers. “Always. You are family.” 

Newt is so shit at this and has no fucking idea what to say after that. 

Chuck is left a shoebox that is taped shut and has his name written across it in Hermann’s jagged handwriting. Everything that Newt was supposed to hand out was in a box in Hermann’s closet - and, fuck, how long was all of that there, how long was he planning this, _bastard_ \- but Chuck is the only one to have something in a separate box. 

He opens it with Newt there. And it’s...DVDs. For fucking _Gundam_. Newt knew he had this secret stash because Hermann is - was - the hugest nerd in the entirety of existence, but he has no idea why he’d give it to Chuck until Chuck squeezes his eyes shut and whispers “ _Fuck_ ,” brokenly and starts crying. 

It must mean something. Hermann must have known it would mean something. 

Newt’s throat is closing up again, but he has to say something. “Chuck.” 

“Y-yeah?” Chuck chokes out past the tears. 

“It. Uhh. It didn’t. Work. I...I failed, I’m s-so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry…”

He’s really expecting Chuck to hit him. He wants Chuck to hit him, because maybe it will make Chuck feel better and Newt deserves it so much. He failed so badly. He deserves to be beaten to a pulp by Chuck Hansen and anyone else that ever loved Hermann. They should hate Newt. Please.

But Chuck wipes his face and says quietly, “Thank you for at least trying.”

Newt looks away. “Yeah,” he mumbles. Chuck is finally growing up. Hermann would be so proud. 

Too bad he’ll never get to see it. Never get to see the people that Chuck or Mako grow up into being now that they can be whoever they want, now they don’t have to be Rangers anymore. He won’t see Tendo’s kid grow up either.

And Newt is never going to get to know who Hermann would be outside of the war. This is so unfair.

 

 

“Movies from after K-Day all suck,” Newt observes. 

Tendo nods and hands him another beer from his illicit stash. They’re doing movie night for some reason. Kinda evolved out of the times when Newt desperately needed to be not alone. And every fucking movie from after the war got really going is either really dark or way too cheerful, and that’s excluding all the awful ones made about Jaeger pilots because everyone in the Dome refuses to watch those. 

Right now is some dramatic scene where someone is sad about someone else dying. 

“You know something weird?” Newt says slowly. “In movies and books and so on, people are always like, ‘the last thing I said was that I hated him!’ or whatever, always getting all angsty about that. But with Hermann...the last thing I said to him was good night and that I loved him, and same from him. But I still feel like shit about that. Like, I should have said more.”

“Yeah,” Tendo agrees softly. “Most of the people I lost, the last things we said was either bland or nice, but it still bugs me. I think it would no matter what.” 

“Humans are stupid,” Newt mumbles. 

Tendo pats his shoulder comfortingly. “Shut up and drink and watch the stupid movie.”

 

 

About six months after Operation Pitfall and the successful closing of the Breach, there’s this big memorial. Partially to celebrate the fact that they’ve gone six months with no further sign of the kaiju or a new Breach, and partially to honor everyone that lost their lives to Pitfall. There’s a metal pillar thing made of a spare Jaeger part erected in the Launch Bay, the names of PPDC members that died carved on top, the names of those lost in Otachi and Leatherback’s attack engraved on the sides. Newt still doesn't know if he should feel guilty about those people...but he does, whether or not he should.

They insist on making a huge fuss unveiling it, of course. All the higher ups involved in Pitfall - including Newt - are required to attend, and there’s a shit load of press, and a bunch of important government officials. You know, all the ones that just a few years ago condemned the PPDC as being useless and a waste of money. Because of course they are permitted to travel internationally but the family members of someone who sacrificed themselves to close the Breach can’t come visit that person as he dies. 

(He doesn’t even _care_ that Hermann wasn’t very close to anyone in his family and hadn’t spoken to them much in the past few years and that he hated emotional scenes and thus, overall didn’t really mind them being unable to visit. It’s still fucking bullshit.)

The only part that really makes it bearable is how pissed off about the whole thing Herc looks in dress blues as he makes a short speech and then unveils the memorial. Mako and Raleigh and Chuck are standing behind him, also all in uniform, Mako with a shark smile, Raleigh expressionless, and Chuck practically oozing rage. Newt and Tendo stand a little behind _them_ and Newt wonders if it’s just his imagination that a bunch of the paparazzi and politicians seem to be staring at him. 

There always were rumors about him and Hermann. And then there’s the Drift, which means they were Drift Compatible. And then there’s Hermann’s name carved onto the top of the pillar underneath _Cheung Wei Tang, Hu Wei Tang, Jin Wei Tang, Aleksis Kaidanovsky, Sasha Kaidanovsky, Stacker Pentecost_. The names in order of death. 

But if they would be staring at anyone, it should be Chuck, who Drifted with the famous marshal and miraculously survived, or Mako, the daughter of that marshal and one of the two to actually explode the bomb, or Raleigh, exploder of said bomb. Newt shouldn’t be stared at more than anyone. 

After the unveiling ceremony there’s a stupid party. Herc sternly instructed all of them to behave themselves for this. They need funding and respect, and this party is a damn good way to get both. But Newt isn’t good at mingling or socializing at the best of times - he has the tendency to ramble on excitedly and argue with strangers and offend pretty much everyone it’s possible to offend, and that was even with Hermann hovering at his shoulder and scolding him when he went too far - and considering this is a ceremony memorializing his fallen comrades and best friend/lab partner/Drift partner/love of his life/everything else he was, it isn’t the best of times. Mostly Newt stands in a corner and drinks too much champagne. 

He’s not dressed showy today. He’s in a suit, simple, and he doesn’t have his sleeves rolled up. It’s not that he regrets his tattoos. Sometimes he hates the kaiju to a sickening degree, and he’ll never like them as much as he used to, but usually he still thinks they are pretty cool. And his tattoos are part of him. He’s never gonna regret them. But they attract attention and he doesn’t want that. 

He still manages to attract attention. The bad part of being in a corner is that you can’t back out. When there’s an interviewer trailed by a camera man getting into your personal space, suddenly there’s no escape route. 

The first few questions are pretty harmless. What drove you to Drift with a kaiju. How do you feel about the loss of Dr. Gottlieb. The rumors about you and- 

He cuts that one off sharp. 

She smiles, all teeth. “One last question, Dr. Geiszler. You must have known Dr. Gottlieb was ill. How could you permit him to Drift with you under those circumstances? Did you have any idea it could have this sort of fatal effect on his health?”

He freezes inside. The only thought is how much it’ll please her if he starts crying or if he shows _any_ emotional reaction. 

“Herm- Dr. Gottlieb. He had been sick for a while, so yes, I did know that.” His voice sounds admirably steady. He isn’t even talking too quickly. “I did not know how sick he was. He thought the war was more important, so he concealed some of how bad it was from me. From everyone. I had no idea it would have such an adverse effect on him. I would have protested if I’d known.”

“Rea-”

“ _However_. The choice was his own. We were in dire straits, and, as it was his job to predict the behavior of the Breach and the kaiju, no one knew better than him how bad it was. Others in the line of duty willingly chose to sacrifice their lives to help protect our world. Dr. Gottlieb may not have been in a Jaeger, but he made the same choice. He knew...logically, he knew that his single life was not more significant than the vast loss of life that would occur if we couldn’t close the Breach, and he believed Drifting with the kaiju with me was the best way for us to find the information we needed. So he made a choice. A sacrifice. I respect his decision. You should too.” 

It’s been six months and he’s never thought of it this way until now. He’s been tearing himself apart inside every single day thinking he should have stopped Hermann. And he still does wish he had. But he also...he needs to respect the choice that Hermann knowingly made. To do otherwise would be to take away from the enormous bravery of what Hermann did.

“I...I see. Well said, Dr. Geiszler. I have no more questions.” 

Her face kind of says sorry as she walks away. Newt decides to be magnanimous and forgive her. He takes another sip of his champagne, his hand shaking a little as he brings the glass up to his mouth. When he drops it…

When he drops it, Lars Gottlieb is standing before him. 

Everyone knew that Hermann was irritable and quick tempered. He’d yell at the drop of a hat. It happened so often that most people just shrugged it off. After all, it was just a skinny dude with a bad haircut and chalk on his face complaining about mostly inconsequential things. Not exactly intimidating. What most people - other than Newt - did not know, was that that was not proper anger for Hermann. He retained real rage for special occasions. And his anger was ungodly terrifying. (In a sort of hot way, because Newt is all kinds of fucked up.) He’d go all quiet and frozen and manage to somehow take up the whole room so that the subject of his rage felt very small and his eyes would flash and you’d be pretty sure he was going to murder you and cleverly dispose of your body and completely get away with the crime and never ever be caught. He was- He was majestic. 

Newt is hot tempered too. But he doesn’t have the depths of proper fury that Hermann could obtain, and Newt has not once in his whole life been scary. He has scared people - by, for instance, almost dying - but he is not _scary_. He just sort of squeaks and shouts and flails when he’s angry. No one is ever impressed. 

So it must be another effect of the Drift right now, the way that Newt goes cold and furious all over and knows that his eyes are radiating murderous fury. Lars raises an eyebrow. Considering he is made of ice and, Newt is fairly sure, killed all of his emotions a long time ago (and tried to do the same to Hermann and all of his children), this is quite the reaction. Newt must be properly terrifying right now. Good.

“The hell are you doing here?” Newt hisses. 

“A memorial service partially in my son’s honor, why would I not be here?” he asks coolly. 

Newt steps up into his personal space, never mind that he has to tilt his head to look into the much taller man’s face. “No. You don’t get to do that.”

“I beg your pardon-”

“You don’t get to treat him like shit and tell him he’s not your son anymore just because he won’t step in line on the stupid Wall of Life thing and then show up after he saves the world and dies and suddenly reclaim him. You said all of that to his _face_ and you are not _allowed_ to say different now.”

Lars twitches. 

“Here is what you get to say,” Newt continues at a low snarl. “You get to say you’re really proud of him and that he did the family honor and that you grieve his loss. And that’s it. You don’t get to say a word beyond that, or so help me god, I will fucking ruin you.”

“Are you threatening me, Dr. Geiszler?”

Newt smiles. Or bares his teeth. “Yeah. I am. And considering I’m the rock star that Drifted with a kaiju and closed the Breach and you’re just the fucking idiot that supported the Wall of Life…Well, I’d take it seriously, if I were you.” 

He twitches again and grits, “I see,” between his teeth. Newt just hopes that it is absolutely killing him that the...What was it Lars said that last time? “You only trust that kaiju obsessed crackpot because you're _fucking_ him.” Yeah. Newt hopes it kills him that the kaiju obsessed crackpot that was fucking his son is now in position to threaten him. 

Newt glares into his icy blue eyes a few seconds longer. “Good.” He steps back and turns away. He hates Lars Gottlieb so much that it’s physically repellent to be near to him. All the things he did and said to Hermann…

He turns back so suddenly that Lars ever so tinily flinches. “Don’t you even care? He died saving the world. Doesn’t that mean something to you? Isn’t that finally enough? He was your _son_.” 

“You don’t know anything-”

“No! I do! I know how incredible he was and you apparently don’t, so clearly I know a hell of a lot more than you!” 

“You think I don’t have regrets?” he spits. “Of course I do! I never meant for it to be this way!”

“Then why...Why couldn’t you have ever told him that?”

Lars shakes his head furiously. “He never listened to me.”

Newt wants to shout at him. “He listened to every fucking thing you ever said! You just never listened to _him_.”

All at once, Lars sags. “What’s it matter now?” he murmurs. “It’s too late anyway.” 

And. Yeah. That’s all true. So this time Newt really does turn his back on him and walk away. 

 

 

Herc is the sort of person who knocks on a door and then comes in before you can say “Come in!” or “I’m busy!” Newt pities Chuck’s teenage years. 

“Need to talk to you about somethin’.” 

Newt makes sure his sigh is audible but not so loud as to be cartoonish, and pushes away from his microscope. “Yeah?”

Herc thrusts his hands into his pockets and looks unusually uncomfortable. “Now that we’re gettin’ to be legit again, we’re able to, you know, hire new people.”

Newt lifts his eyebrows. “And I care why?”

“That’s probably gonna include some new K-scientists. Not exactly sure when, but, uh...You might wanna clear out some space.” They both look at Hermann’s chalkboards at the same second, Herc flicking his glance over them and back to Newt, Newt staring. 

The boards are big. Newt had laughed when Hermann first had them hauled in here, partially because who the fuck uses blackboards - “I like to be able to see my all thoughts neatly laid out, Newton!” - and partially because there was no way Hermann was ever going to need that much space. Then, of course, he had them completely filled in within, what, a week? 

He took photos of the boards at the end of the day every day. He sighed whenever he had to erase something. Newt would scribble drawings and messages into blank corners, usually lewd, occasionally sweet, all in German so that an outside observer usually couldn’t read it. It pissed Hermann off like nothing else. Keeping it here made it feel like Hermann was going to come back soon and use it again, and he’d be so irritated if Newt disturbed it so he knew he had to keep it just the same. It was a way of pretending, maybe. 

“We could put it into storage, maybe,” Herc suggests gently. “Sheet over it so it doesn’t smear or fade. I’m not saying you should get rid of it.” 

Newt nods and says in a raw voice, “Yeah. That’d be okay.”

“I’ll have someone come fetch them later today,” Herc says. He hesitantly pats Newt on the shoulder and walks out of the room as if he’s escaping. 

The worst part is that it doesn’t even hurt that bad. It hurts, of course, a dull awful ache in his chest that a year ago he definitely would not have called “not that bad.” The lab is going to look so empty without those chalkboards looming over everything. It’ll mean losing yet another piece of Hermann. He’s like a jigsaw being slowly put away. How long till Newt has nothing left at all?

But half a year ago this would have killed him. He’d be in a ball sobbing, useless for the rest of the day, maybe the week. And now...now he sits and stares at the chalkboards and he’s not okay, but he’s bearing it. He hates that. Hermann was the most important person in the world to Newt. How can he possibly be accepting that he’s gone? How can he say “was” instead of “is”? The wound is, ever so slowly, healing. Newt doesn’t want to be in pain, but he also doesn’t want to accept Hermann’s death, because that feels like yet another way of losing him. Another puzzle piece being pulled away and put in a dusty box in the back of his mind. 

 

 

Herc must tell someone that the board is being putting away in storage, because when two burly men that Newt only vaguely recognizes come by to take the board, Mako trails after them. She sits with him as he watches them remove the last physical remnant of Hermann from the lab. 

“I still miss him,” Newt says.

Mako nods. “Me too. I don’t think that ever stops.” 

“Sometimes I still can’t even believe he’s gone.”

“He isn’t,” Mako says softly. Newt tears his eyes away from Hermann’s writing long enough to look at Mako. She has that expression that, to someone that didn’t know her, might seem expressionless, even though it’s far from it. “None of them are gone, not really. They are still in us, in our memories.”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess that’s true.”

“It’s true,” she insists, perhaps hearing his doubtful tone. “The last thing that Sensei said to me was that I could always find him in the Drift, and it’s true, they are still in our-

The world fundamentally shifts under him.

“Mako,” he whispers. “Say that again.”

“They are in our memories?” she repeats doubtfully, cocking her head anxiously at him. 

“No, no no,” Newt says urgently, waving his hands. “The other thing. About the Drift. What did Pentecost say?”

She furrows her eyebrows. Newt probably looks insane right now. Mako is probably worrying. It doesn’t matter. He’s _thinking_.

“One of the last things he said to me was, ‘You can always find me in the Drift.’”

“Of course.” His hands are shaking. “Of course, how could I not have seen it? Mako, you’re a genius!” 

“Newt, what-”

He jumps to his feet. His altered Pons is still hidden in one of the lab’s storage closets. Some people wanted it for some official thing - he wasn’t really paying attention - and he’d had no idea how to explain away the modifications he did to it, so he lied and said it was lost in the confusion of Pitfall. Now he’s desperately glad. He could maybe build a new one, but it’s so much better to just be able to run over to the closet and haul out the Pons. He can do this _right now_.

“Is that a _Drift Machine_? Newt, what are you doing?”

“I have to do something important,” he babbles. “I have to go. Thank you so much, Mako, thank you!”

She grabs his arm as he darts past her, pushing the cart before him. “What is this?” she demands, a flash of steel in her eyes that makes her look shockingly alike to Pentecost. “What are you doing?”

“I just. Uh. I have to do something important. Mako, it’s, it’s really important, and I swear it isn’t dangerous at all, please-”

She narrows her eyes. “Not dangerous?”

He seizes that gratefully. “Really, it isn’t, there’s no way I could hurt myself, totally safe.” 

She scans his face a long moment. Checking if he’s lying, probably. He feels that old impulse to brag about the amazing thing he’s done, tell her all of it- But it’s so complicated and it would take so long and he’s so- At last she nods and says firmly, “Okay, but I’m checking on you later.”

“I’ll be in Hermann’s room,” he promises. He’s been living there for months now but he still doesn’t think of it as his. 

Mako lets go of him. “Thank you,” he breathes and dashes out of the room, going just slow enough that he doesn’t lose control of the cart. 

He has looked at the hard drive onto which he attempted to save Hermann’s personality exactly once in the seven months since he failed to make it work. That was when he made the move from his old room to Hermann’s. He’d been tempted to leave it under his old bed, but the thought that someone else might move into the room and find the hard drive and perhaps dispose of it was repellent to him. Even though he was pretty sure the drive was useless. 

Now, he locks Hermann’s door behind him and flings himself onto Hermann’s floor and digs around under Hermann’s bed until he finds the drive on which he may or may not have saved the love of his life. And then he lies on the floor and stares at it. 

It’s covered in dust. Everything under the bed is. Hermann would be scandalized. Very upset with Newt for letting his room get dirty. Really, Newt can’t even believe that dust would dare to exist in the room of Hermann Gottlieb, top neat freak of the world, how does the dust even have the nerve because Hermann always leveled this really terrifying glare at any sort of mess and if Newt was the one receiving that glare he would have fled forever except now that he thinks of it Hermann looked at him like that lots of times and somehow he stuck his ground and tossed back a saucy remark so maybe the dust is the same as him and if this doesn’t work it’s going to break him. 

He can’t do it again. He can’t get up his hope again only to have them dashed. He barely survived it before and if this doesn’t work he is not overly confident in his ability to survive it a second time. He lied when he told Mako it wouldn’t be dangerous. No physical harm, yeah, but emotional...And is it really worth it, if it could break not just his heart (already broken beyond repair into hundreds of shards) but also his spirit, which has only just managed to survive the long years of hardship and loss. It’s a little ragged, but it’s in one piece. Is losing that worth it? When this probably won’t even work? 

But he thinks of Hermann saying, “I’ll go with you.” He knew that could break him, but he did it. To save the world, yes, but also to save Newt. Doesn’t Newt owe him the same?

And if he could see Hermann again...Talk to him. Maybe touch him. Look into his brown eyes. Be scolded by him. The tiniest possibility of that is _worth_ it. 

The book of Neruda poems had sat underneath the hard drive. It’s still under the bed. He pulls it out both with shaking hands. Flips open to their poem. He hasn’t opened it since that last evening with Hermann. But there’s a certain part. He remembers it running through his head in the immediate aftermath of Hermann’s death. He reads it out loud now, voice shaking.

“If only you would call,  
a long sound, a bewitching whistle,  
a sequence of wounded waves,  
maybe someone would come,  
from the peaks of the islands, from the red depths of the  
sea,  
someone would come, someone would come.”

It feels like a promise, and that’s dangerous, because there are no promises. _Politics, poetry, promises, these are all lies_. But if he were to call. If he were to reach out to Hermann. Then maybe he would come. 

Newt settles the Pons onto his head. He plugs it into the hard drive with the attachments that were essentially invented by him and Tendo. It seems too simple. And maybe it is, and that’s scary too, because if this doesn’t work then he’ll convince himself there was something more he needed to do, no assurance it doesn’t work from someone he trusts this time to convince him, and he could easily lose himself in the chase to find a way to make it work. 

“I’ll go with you,” he whispers, and he activates the Drift. 

The cool blue rush of memories. Mostly his, a few from Hermann and the kaiju. He lets them wash over him. The world rushing in at him and memories rushing at him and then- Then there’s a memory that is familiar but instinctively, absolutely _not his_ and he doesn’t just chase the rabbit, he fucking dives on it, and then he’s somewhere else entirely.


	5. A Ghost Unleashed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memories and thoughts.

He’s standing outside. It’s raining. Except, no, it isn’t. There’s rain in the air, but instead of falling, it hangs there unnaturally, fat droplets suspended unmoving in the air, as if gravity decided to cease to work. It’s hot. Humid. Everything is dead silent. 

There are tables and chairs around him, small and pretty, made of wrought iron, mostly unoccupied. A low railing fences fences the chairs into a square; a porch. On the other side of the railing is a sidewalk and a road filled with cars and beyond that are tall buildings. A city. Berlin, Newt knows from just a glance. The porch fronts a small cafe. 

Nothing is moving. The stillness of the rain is immediately noticeable, as is the silence, but after a few seconds of looking around with wide eyes, Newt realizes that everything is still. The cars sit in the street, but not as if they are parked there. People are frozen mid step on the sidewalk. Weirdly - extremely weirdly - all their faces are vague blurs. A pigeon is suspended in the air. Newt, standing in front of the door that leads from the cafe to the porch, is the only thing in motion. 

He knows this place. He’s been here precisely once and he remembers it vividly. It was almost nine years ago now. It was raining then too, and it was hot-

Oh. Oh god. It’s the same day. It _has_ to be, everything is so familiar, the rain, the humidity, the cafe, the mostly abandoned porch. And if it is the same day then that means he should be here-

In the corner of the porch. Back to the railing. Huddled under the flimsy umbrella attached to the table that is clearly meant to protect from sun, not rain, and thus totally drenched, hair sticking black to his skull, button-up shirt plastered to his skin, a scowl on a face that is so very young and open and _healthy_. 

Hermann. 

There. A few steps away from him. Frozen still just like everything else, but so very alive. God, he is young. He must be, what, twenty-eight? Just barely twenty-eight. An adult, but...young. Hardly any lines on his face, no marks of pain or grief, no stupid military haircut, a frown that is meant to be intimidating but is nothing compared to what he could summon when older. 

Oh god oh god oh god.

This must be a memory. One of Hermann’s memories. Newt doesn’t understand why it’s frozen like this, but it’s obviously a memory, that explains why people’s faces are blurred out. If Hermann hadn’t looked at them that day, then he couldn’t have remembered them. Maybe this memory was on Hermann’s mind when they saved him. Or maybe Newt is here because it’s a memory they share and thus he was able to access it easily. On a sudden hunch, he twists around and yeah, fuck, halted on the sidewalk a distance away is _Newt_. Unexpectedly crisp, also terrifyingly younger, a little less damp, no tattoos yet, and did his hair really look that stupid back then? Or maybe Hermann just thought his hair looked stupid, this is a memory so obviously it will be subjective.

This was the first time they met in the real world. They’d been emailing for nearly four years, ostensibly about the kaiju, but really about everything. Newt had thought Hermann was the most incredible person he’d ever spoken to. In 2017, he’d had to go to Berlin for some PPDC related thing - they’d both already been working for them - and he knew that Hermann was there, so he’d, secretly terrified, asked Hermann if he wanted to meet. And Hermann had said yes and sent him the address of this cafe and also the time. 

Newt was late. Of course he was. He was so nervous that day that he’d been trying all morning to distract himself and ended up distracting himself so successfully that time got away from him and he left at the time he was supposed to meet Hermann. It was raining and traffic was shit and Newt managed to get lost and show up thirty five minutes late. Hermann was drenched and pissed - later he confessed to Newt that he was terrified he was being stood up - and way more uptight than Newt was expecting, and they fought. Badly. Didn’t talk outside of professional necessity for three years after that. 

But everything was definitely moving when they met. He’s not sure why it isn’t now. Oh fuck, fuck, what if it’s broken, what if he downloaded memories but only that and thus they are all static images, or maybe this is literally the only thing that was saved, maybe there is just this frozen image, oh that would be _worse_ than it not working at all because this is so close-

Calm down. Breathe. (Except this isn’t real so can he even breathe? Well, it at least feels like he can. And his real body still exists outside of this). There are ways to check, there are things he can do. Like, for instance, if this is a memory, what if he exits it? He cautiously takes a step forward to check if he can, and, yup, he moves. So he’ll try walking through the memory, see what happens when he goes beyond the edges of what Hermann remembers...if he even can.

His first instinct is to open the door of the cafe. Which is dumb as fuck and born of watching too many old sci-fi movies like _Inception_. The only thing that lies beyond the door is the actual cafe. Or the memory of the cafe. Whatever. Point is, the image of Hermann has a tea sitting untouched in front of him on the table, so clearly he went in the cafe and can remember it. That’s no good. He’s gotta go farther away.

First he walks over to Hermann and just stares at him. So young and beautiful. When he saw Hermann that day, he was taken aback at how closed off and unfriendly he looked. He was scowling - of course, it was raining and Newt had kept him waiting - and he had his arms folded tightly in front of him and his shoulders hunched. (No cane yet. Newt’s not even sure if his illness had started manifesting yet, this long ago.) In his letters, Hermann was so passionate and open. Half the reason they got off to such a bad start was because Newt was, well, kind of disappointed when he didn’t seem that way when they met. Hermann does not react well to people being disappointed in him. Did not. Does not. Fuck.

(The other half of the reason was that _Newt_ was not what _Hermann_ was expecting, based on the emails.) 

Now, looking at him, knowing him so well, it’s easy to see that Hermann is just scared. He’s seen genuinely unfriendly and this is not it, this is nerves. Hermann was smarter than Newt, about this at least. He’d already figured out just from the emails that he was in love with Newt. It took Newt a year of working with him and shouting at him and _enjoying_ himself and wanting to kiss him so bad it hurt to realize that he loved him. Newt figures they were probably in love with each other a roughly equal amount of time, but Hermann knew it way sooner, and was not exactly happy about the vulnerability that created. So meeting Newt for the first time was terrifying to him, and his reaction to being scared - his reaction to a lot of emotions, actually - is to shut down and glare. And Newt didn’t get that then. He does now. He wishes he could go back to then and know that Hermann was afraid and be patient and kind and tell him, “I love you.” They had four years. They could have had eight. More, even, if they hadn’t been such idiots while emailing each other. 

He sighs and makes himself look away. There’s still a slim possibility of there being more time, but not if he hangs around in this empty memory staring at Hermann. Back to work. Consider how to get out of here.

One option is to just walk in a random direction. But he’s not sure how effective that will be. Hermann lived in Berlin for quite a while. Of course he won’t remember the whole city, and considering that this is a memory of a specific event, it might not include space out of sight of this memory, but he could also potentially end up walking for miles. Better to go somewhere he knows Hermann won’t have been, like, say, through the door of the business next door, which is oh so conveniently being held open by a faceless woman. It’s just big enough for him to slip through. 

It sorta freaks him out that when he does slip through, he’s suddenly in a bedroom that is definitely an entirely separate location from cafe. From Berlin, even. Like, whoa, he wasn’t really expecting that to work, or at least not like _that_. That is way too fucking sci-fi for him to handle. 

He reminds himself that he professionally dissects giant monsters. His whole life is sci fi, hardcore sci fi, fucking Godzilla movies. He can handle _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_. 

So. The bedroom. Vaguely familiar. Obviously another one of Hermann’s memories. Not moving. Newt barely gives the room a once over - he hasn’t been here before, but it’s easy enough to guess it’s Hermann’s childhood bedroom - before his gaze freezes on the bed. 

There’s a kid on the bed, curled up in a ball, facing away from the door. He’s wearing formal clothes, a blazer and dress shirt and the sort of fancy shorts that some clearly evil person decided at some point was what little boys should wear to dress up. All in black. His face is hidden but _fuck_. Obviously Hermann. 

Tiny, tiny Hermann. He can’t be older than nine or ten. Jesus. He’s so little. Newt should just. Move on. Out of this memory. But...he’s so tiny. Newt just has to walk around the bed until he can see what of his face isn’t pressed into his arms, his heart wrenching when he sees that the kid is crying. 

Dressed in black, about nine...Newt bets he knows exactly when this memory is; right after Hermann’s mother’s funeral. He never told Newt much about her, but it inevitably came up when he told Newt about his illness. She died of the same thing when he was really young. Genetic illness. 

God. Thinking about it, she must have been pretty much the same age when she died as Hermann was. That’s so fucked up.

Poor baby, losing his mother this young, being left with only Lars. Newt wonders if it’s weird to really, really want to hug the much younger version of your boyfriend. It’s just. He looks so sad. And small. And adorable. 

It’s hard, once again, to make himself walk away. Takes longer this time, too. There’s no convenient door nearby to lead somewhere Hermann has never been before. Newt has to walk through the Gottlieb house, managing to take several wrong turns and feeling a lot like he ought to be creeping even though the memory is frozen so that no one could possibly see Newt. Or care. Due to being memories and all. 

Is it immoral to look around Hermann’s home? Yeah, Hermann is a pretty private person and this is information that Newt would not normally have access to. But it’s also old stuff, nearing thirty years in the past, and it’s _Newt_ , so maybe he wouldn’t mind?

Also he might be dead so then he might not be able to mind and that is a super fun thought. 

He decides to not actively poke around but if he happens to see adorable pictures of tiny Hermann, big eyed in a dorky private school uniform, as he treads down the halls of the surprisingly large house, well, he can’t help that, can he? And it isn’t prying to note that the house is a hell of a lot cleaner than you’d expect for a family with four kids. Now that he thinks about, Hermann’s bedroom was also really neat, especially for a little kid, no toys on the floor or anything, just a single model airplane sitting on a shelf. Newt just bets that Lars was a total hardass about keeping the house clean. No wonder Hermann was so fastidious as an adult. 

He opens the front door of the house, curious to see what sort of street Hermann lived on...and finds himself in what is obviously a school hallway. Well. That answers the question of how far the memories go then. 

The freezing effect is more obvious here than it was in the house, where the only person he saw was Hermann. Here, the hall is full of students, all dressed in a uniform almost identical to the one in the photos in Hermann’s house, and not a one of them is moving. It’s kinda creepy, particularly because the majority of the faces - but not all - are blurred out. Newt really doesn’t want to touch any of the stationary teenagers, so he has to try and edge his way through the crowd. 

He almost trips when he suddenly emerges into a clear space a few meters across filled with only one student, a scrawny teenager sprawled across the ground with a mess of papers and books scattered before him. Newt assumes for a second that the boy _did_ trip as Newt nearly just did...only then there is another boy standing behind him at the edge of the crowd, one foot stuck out, a mean smirk on his vague but not blurry face. The other children nearby who aren’t blurred out are also smiling or laughing.

It’s obvious then that the tripped boy is Hermann. Newt circles around to look at his face for confirmation even though he’s pretty sure. Of course it is Hermann, flushed and humiliated. He’s all awkward angles and long, gangly limbs as a teenager. His mouth, which is admittedly froggy even as an adult, but in an attractive sort of way - in Newt’s opinion, at least, which is obviously the only one that counts - looks completely ridiculous on his teen face. He also has a black eye. 

“Oh Herms,” Newt murmurs softly. Newt was bullied in school too. But no one ever gave him a black eye. You kinda can’t, when the kid is a solid three or four years younger than you and fairly tiny, as Newt usually was. 

Something flickers. 

It’s like a movement, the tiniest of movements in the corner of his eye, that’s the best he can describe it. A flicker of action. In the stillness of the memory, it’s more than noticeable. Newt jumps and swivels around, scanning the crowd for the motion. His heart is abruptly pounding. Fear or excitement? Both, probably. Movement is good. Also kind of creepy in this utterly silent world. 

He watches for a long time, but the flicker doesn’t happen again. There is no visible change. He gives up eventually and wanders away, looking for a door that will hopefully lead to a new - maybe _not_ frozen memory - and unexpectedly turns a corner and finds himself back in the cafe. 

Newt pauses. Frowns. Tries to quell the panic rising again. Maybe there are only those three memories- No. No, he has to keep looking. There has to be more. Hermann - really Hermann, his thoughts and personalities, not just memories - has to be around here somewhere, in one of these memories. He _has_ to be. 

This time he tries heading down the street and turning at the first corner he can find. Sure enough, the street immediately transitions into being a hall of the Shatterdome, just outside their lab. The door is open. Hermann is there, standing on the tape line, and a memory of Newt is before him, on tiptoes to kiss him, one hand on the nape of his neck. Hermann looks utterly astonished. 

Newt smiles, tears rising in his eyes. If he’s correct, then this is their first kiss. He’d finally admitted to himself that he had feelings for Hermann, then promptly convinced himself that those feelings were not returned, so he spent a month pining over him and wanting to kiss him worse than ever, and finally a passionate argument about Hermann’s stupid tape line turned into an unexpected kiss. He’d pulled away a second later, sure Hermann would be appalled and hate him worse than ever...and then Hermann had grabbed him and kissed him. 

He wants to kiss Hermann again. He has to find him. He wipes his eyes and sniffs loudly and- Something _flickers_.

It’s smaller this time, but, goddammit, he’s sure that he sees it. “What is that?” he hisses, spinning around, and it flickers even harder, so that he can tell that it’s not just a quick flash of movement in the corner of his eye, as he had thought, but the entire image twitching. Moving. Like a movie that is paused and someone hits play and then immediately hits pause again. An instant of sound, too, he thinks. 

It worries him, but it also definitely wasn’t the image getting weaker or vanishing for a second. If anything, it seemed to be a little more real in those seconds. And there was a sensation in his head, like something in the back of his mind. That was right where he had felt connection to Hermann when they Drifted. 

Hope stirs dangerously in his stomach. He squares his shoulders and keeps marching down the Dome hall. 

The cafe. He makes a face and breathes deeply through his nose and strides off in a new direction. 

Hermann about ten or eleven playing with three other children on the lawn of a big house that definitely isn’t the home in Germany. Frozen. Hermann looking nervous while kissing a boy in a scarily neat college dorm room. Frozen. Hermann in a doctor’s office, the doctor very solemn, Hermann dead white. This one makes Newt feel kind of sick. Frozen. The cafe again. 

“Goddammit!” Newt shouts and the whole memory twitches hard with movement. He would swear that Hermann blinks and incrementally moves his hand. Newt stands dead still staring at him and...Frozen. 

He’s running out of new directions to go, so he experimentally slips through the open door again. It leads to the lab again, Newt sprawled on the floor with a bloody nose and the Pons on his head, Hermann cradling him and taking his pulse with wide, frightened eyes. That’s pretty seriously weird, because even though Newt is there, he doesn’t remember this. He was way too strung out on the Drift. 

And he would swear that isn’t quite how he looks. His eyes are half open, and there’s no way they are that green. They can be sorta bluish green in the right light, but he’s sure they’ve never been that vivid. And he’s...he’s not that good-looking. And Hermann is off too, he’s noticed that through all of these memories, his mouth is always a little bigger than it should be and his face is harsher and less friendly and as an adult he usually looks older than he is. Newt sighs and shakes his head. Oh Herms. Is that really how he sees - saw - himself?

After the lab is Hermann as a little kid, in uniform, sitting in a corner with his legs pulled up to his chest and his face buried in his knees. Newt remembers seeing that when the Drifted together before. He’s not sure the exact significance but...he’s pretty sure it has something to do with Lars. Fucking Lars. 

After that is a Jaeger launch bay with a completed Mark I in it and a mid-twenties Hermann gazing up at it as if it’s the most wondrous thing he’s ever seen. Hermann about eighteen on the roof of his house, lookng up at the stars. (This one is hard to get out off until Newt manages to find the ladder leaning up against the roof.) 

And then the fucking cafe. Every other memory he’s visited once, but he keeps coming back to the goddamn fucking frozen cafe, what the _hell_ , he has got to be running out of time, Mako said she’d come find him soon and although he isn’t one hundred percent sure that time flows the same here, still, he must have been here a while. 

Hermann watching the news coverage of Trespasser with his mouth fallen open and fear in his eyes. Newt and Hermann frozen in bed. There’s no fucking way Newt’s body is that nice. He’s even still a little chubby in this memory, but it looks really _good_ and there’s no way. Whereas Hermann is a hell of a lot thinner and paler than he really was; or, at least, he wasn’t until the very end, and considering that Hermann is holding the book of poems and thus Newt thinks he knows what night this is, this isn’t the end. If - when - Newt finds Hermann in this stupid maze of his memories, he’s going to do some work correcting Hermann’s self-image. 

Back to the _goddamn_ cafe. 

“What the fuck!” Newt shouts. “What is this-”

It’s not a flicker this time. It’s an entire instant of movement. People walking by, cars, Hermann pursing his lips, even sound, and, most importantly, a sense of _life_ in the back of Newt’s head. And then it freezes again. Newt gasps and stares around wildly. What is making that happen-

Think. Calm down and think. Common variables. What has happened before each of the flickers, what has he done, because it’s fair to guess that he would be the catalyst for change here-

He made noise. Each time, he had made a noise. 

That makes sense, maybe? He’s been creeping around, afraid to disturb anything, and feeling pressured by the silence to be as respectful and quiet as possible. Like he was in a movie theater or museum. But the times he’s made noise, he’s talked or shouted and so on, that triggered movement.

He takes a deep breath and says cautiously, “Hello?”

There’s definitely a reaction, but it’s back to being so quiet that it seems like only a flicker. Louder?

He fills up his lungs and bellows, “HERMS!” 

The motion is stronger this time, but still not much more than a twitch. 

Newt glares around and snaps, “Goddammit, Hermann Gottlieb, don’t you think you’ve kept me waiting long enough already? Wake up already!” 

There are several seconds of motion this time, and the life stirring in the back of Newt’s mind almost seems to have feeling, and his own heart is bursting with hope and fear...and then it freezes.

“Oh, c’mon! Herms!” 

Not much more than a second. 

Okay. Okay. So. His presence, his _active_ presence, that causes the memories to react. And it probably isn’t insignificant that he keeps being brought back here. But just saying something isn’t enough. That’s alright. This is a start. He can experiment more, he can think of further things to do.

Like, okay, maybe just saying a sentence or two in Hermann’s presence isn’t enough. But maybe a little more...and maybe if he got closer? It’s a little unreasonable to think that will help but eh, what the hell. He cross across the cafe’s porch and sits in the chair across from Hermann. It’s damp. That’s weird. Not a level of detail he was expecting. 

Suddenly, sitting across from a youthful, scowling Hermann, he’s weirdly nervous. He’s way too overstimulated by all this, jittering from excitement and fear and hope and nerves too. Say, just say that he does manage this, and Hermann’s essence really is preserved in here. It’s been so long since Newt has properly seen him. What is the first thing he should say?

Doesn’t matter. Not at that stage yet. Don’t get grandiose, Geiszler, don’t think ahead of yourself. 

He makes himself smile. Might be silly. But if Hermann really is in here somewhere, he does want him to wake up to Newt smiling. “Hey. Herms. Hi. It’s me, you know, your boyfriend. Although…”

It’s hard to talk when the scene around him is moving in starts and judders. A bad film reel. Stop motion. It’s the most movement so far, but it’s not continuous. Why is it not continuous?

“Although,” he makes himself continue, “At this point in time, you didn’t know me. Wasn’t your boyfriend yet. But I was still...I was definitely st-still in love with you, darling, s-so you gotta wake up for me, okay, you can’t keep doing this, just, just _look_ at me, I’m right here. I’m right here, Herms, I’m right here just, just, c’mon, p-please, please…”

It’s fading. The shivers are fading now, no matter how much he talks, and no, no, please no, this can’t be failing, he’s so close to Hermann, it has to work, he could almost reach out and touch him-

Touch him.

Hermann, or the memory of him, has one hand on the edge of the table. Newt is terrified. Everything else has felt real so far, but what if he reaches out and touches Hermann and his hand just goes through him? Or maybe it won’t feel like anything. The same as touching a wall. But. He has to. So, shaking, feeling sick, he reaches out and brushes his fingers across Hermann’s knuckles. 

The memory slams into life hard. Hermann crossing his arms tighter. A car honking. The pigeon hanging above the porch flutters away. Rain falls on Newt’s face. The connection in his head feels like a question mark, intense confusion. 

The tears already forming in Newt’s eyes spill out gladly, and he reaches out again, “Hermann-” And it all stops. 

“No!” he screams. Flicker. The tears are lost to grief and rage. It’s failed he’s failed Hermann is gone and the best he’s ever going to get are fucking _flickers_. “Fuck! Just- Fuck this!” 

He flings himself across the table and presses his mouth hard against Hermann’s. 

Hands shove against his shoulders. “Wh-what the hell are you doing?” a familiar voice shouts in perfect German. 

He falls back into his chair. “Hermann?” 

Everything is moving. Question marks and indignation that isn’t his in his head. Hermann _glaring_ at him, a blush on his cheeks. 

“Do you...remember me?” Newt asks weakly, not daring to hope again.

“Of course not-” Hermann starts to snap, and then he pauses. (For an instant Newt is terrified he has frozen again.) He narrows his eyes. His perfect, beautiful, brown eyes. His long eyelashes sweeping across his pale skin. “You’re _him_ , aren’t you?” he says accusingly, looking perfectly outraged. He even sounds young. “You’re Newton Geiszler!” 

Oh. Hermann doesn’t recognize him. Not really. But this...well, he can work with this. At the very least, he’s alive. There is no longer a snapped wire in his head. 

The black hole is gone and now there is so much.

“You’re late,” Hermann continues angrily. 

Newt smiles through the tears. That was the first thing Hermann ever said to him out loud. He’s _alive_. After a manner. 

“Yeah,” he manages. “I’m really sorry. You...you kept me waiting a long time too, you know.”

He opens his mouth, all self-righteous anger. “I di-” And then closes it again. He properly looks at Newt, biting his lips as if puzzled. He glances around the cafe, eyebrows furrowing. “What…What’s…”

Newt leans across the table, alarmed. “Hermann? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Hermann holds a hand in front of his face. Flexes it in and out of a fist. The movement is easy and natural. “This isn’t right.” 

“What’s not right?”

He focuses on Newt again, which only seems to deepen his puzzlement. “You aren’t. You’re...you’re too old. And this is...This isn’t how this _happened_ , what’s happening, what’s _wrong_?” He sounds panicked suddenly. 

Newt reaches out to him instinctively and Hermann flinches back, standing up so hard that he knocks over the chair with a clatter. “I know you,” Hermann says like an accusation.

Newt draws his hands in to himself. “Yeah,” he says in a measured voice. “I’m Newton Geiszler. You know me.”

“No, no but- We’ve emailed but I, I _know_ you, how do I know you?”

Newt is not really sure of what’s going on right now, but the memory of the cafe is starting to go blurry and vague around the edges and Hermann looks absolutely terrified. “We’ve known each other a long time,” he says softly. “Don’t worry. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.” 

“I- I know.” But he still draws back from Newt. Takes a step back and then goes wide-eyed and looks at his legs like they are miraculous. He holds his hand in front of his face again. His very steady hand. “I- I’m- Ohh, oh god, Newt, what’s happening, I don’t, I don’t feel right-”

That hits like a blow to the chest. He can see, all too vividly, Hermann, older and with blood in his eye, grabbing his shoulder and saying, “I don’t feel right-” and then falling. 

Perhaps that is why instead of quietly calming Hermann down and rationally explaining things, he instead blurts out, “This is a memory. We’re Drifting.”

“ _What_?”

Fuck. Not the best way he could have said that. 

He makes himself take deep breaths and _not_ think of the implications of breathing in a memory or wonder if Hermann _can_ breath. Hermann must be able to at least remember breathing, because he is starting to gasp in a way that is distinctly panicky. 

“Hermann,” he says in his best calm voice. Hermann has in the past informed him that is not very calm, but whatever, it’s the best he has. “This. All of this. It’s a memory. The first time we met.”

Hermann looks around wildly. “No, it can’t be-” His gaze settles on something past Newt’s shoulder and he goes sort of white and then green. “W-w-what the hell!” 

It’s just instinct to look over his shoulder. He winces when he sees what Hermann must be looking at. The memory of Newt, the one that belongs here, walking down the street toward them, apparently oblivious of the scene playing out. Of course he would be, he’s only a memory. 

“That’s impossible,” Hermann whispers, wrapping his arms around himself and suddenly looking very small. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s a memory,” Newt repeats. “We’re in your memory. That...uh, that other version of me is just your memory of me. But I’m not a memory, I’m real.”

“But- No. This isn’t how memory works! This is, this is completely unnatural! And how c-can there be two of you, how can you be real and not real!”

Proof. He needs proof. Hermann is the essential empiricist. He needs proof, but he is willing to believe impossible things if you can prove them. That will calm him down, make him look. But what proof is there?

“Look at me, Hermann. Actually look.” He does, slowly. Newt is distracted all over again by how young he looks. “Like you said. I’m older than I should be, right? And the tattoos.” He holds out his arms. He hadn’t had tattoos then. Yamarashi hadn’t even happened yet. 

“This isn’t how this happened,” Hermann repeats at a whisper. 

“I know, Herms,” he says reassuringly. “This really isn’t how this happened. Because, yeah, see, this is a memory. And I’m not a memory, like I said, I’m really me. Present day me. Not just your memory of me. So I can do things that didn’t happen in this memory-” Sudden thought. “Like, look at this.” He leans over the railing. There’s a person nearby, under an umbrella. He shouts, “HEY, LOOK AT ME!” and the person does not even flinch. They march stolidly away. He turns back to Hermann. “See?” 

Everything stops again. 

Newt is going to scream he’s absolutely going to fucking scream because how is that possible they were getting somewhere there were at least some fragments of Hermann’s conscious mind preserved and a confused twenty-eight year old version of Hermann that doesn’t properly remember Newt is better than nothing-

But no. The memory is frozen, but Hermann isn’t. He’s standing so still that Newt hadn’t noticed at first, but he’s blinking, shaking, breathing in thin little gasps, staring straight ahead with his eyes huge. “This is a memory,” he says in a tiny voice. He looks a little bit like he’s about to throw up. Wouldn’t exactly be out of character for him. 

“Yeah,” Newt says, trying to keep his voice gentle, not let the wild hope surging through him break through. He doesn’t want to spook him, not when he’s clearly already spooked. 

“I don’t. Understand.” 

“Do you wanna...sit down?”

Hermann knocked his chair over before so apparently he decides the best reaction is to simply sink down and sit on the ground, huddled up against the corner formed by the railing. Oh dear. Newt stands up and circles around the table, squatting down on the ground a safe distance away from Hermann, the fallen chair between them. Hermann glances at him and then stares. 

“You. Aren’t frozen too.”

Newt shakes his head. 

“Why- Why not?”

“I’m real.”

“What. Is this?”

Newt purses his lips, considering. _This_ is pretty complicated. “We’re...in the Drift,” is the best he can come up with. Start simple.

Hermann furrows his brow. Licks his lips. Glances to the side. Trying to remember things, probably. “The Drift…” he repeats slowly. 

The scene around them vanishes. Not slowly, doesn’t turn into a blur, it just disappears, and instead they are sitting on the ground in Hong Kong before Otachi’s baby’s corpse. PPDC technicians and Chau’s workers swarm about them, all static. Standing before them is...them, Pons helmets on their heads, halted in the instant before the Drift. 

“Wow, that’s unsettling,” Newt whispers. Judging from Hermann’s choked inhalation, he agrees. 

“I remember this. This is...later...We...Oh. Um. This is so…”

“It’s okay,” Newt repeats. “Take your time. Think it through.”

Hermann nods a few times too many. “This is the Drift.”

“Yes.”

“But this isn’t how Drift is supposed to work,” he says unsteadily. “Are we...Am I chasing the rabbit? Did it go wrong?”

Oh. It’s a fair guess. 

“Not exactly,” Newt says. “We are Drifting, yeah, but this isn’t that Drift. We made it through that. Uh. Sort of.”

“Sort of?” Hermann echoes sharply. 

“Well. You. Um. The Drift was...rough on you-”

Hermann’s eyes go wide and he breathes, “Oh-” That’s all the warning that Newt has before a sick jolt of pain and _wrongness_ hits the back of his mind, blurring everything out. He very distantly hears Hermann’s voice, tinny and ringing, gasp “ _I don’t feel right_.” 

The pain fades slowly. Newt pants and swallows away nausea and tries to blink away the blurs, slowly realizing that the scene before him is no longer the same as it was. They’re in LOCCENT. No matter how he rubs at his eyes or glasses, it stays out of focus. 

He can recognize the memory anyway. His side of it has haunted his dreams.

Hermann stood up in the moments where Newt was out of it. He looks different. Older. Still not as old as he was at the end, but certainly not twenty-eight anymore. “I got sick,” he says quietly. “Like my mother. And the Drift...I was dying.” The scene, once again, changes. It’s not nearly so violent this time, but Newt is getting seriously confused. He wishes Hermann would stop doing that. 

It’s even blurrier now, but still obviously the hospital room. The smell makes him feel nauseous again. He can’t handle the smell. Too many memories. He staggers to his feet.

There is the vague sound of his own voice saying, “ _Good night, Herms. Love you _,” but Newt is not speaking.__

__“I was dying,” Hermann repeats. He isn’t looking at Newt. “And the last thing I remember is...Is going to sleep. So I. I’m dead, aren’t I? That’s what this is. My life flashing before my eyes or some sort of weird afterlife or…whatever, I’m either _dead_ or dying.”_ _

__“N-no, Hermann, that’s not it!”_ _

__Hermann turns on him furiously. “You probably aren’t even real!” he shouts, voice cracking. “I’m dead and this is, this is some sort of strange manifestation of my memories and you aren’t real and I’m _dead_!”_ _

__“I’m real,” Newt insists. He can’t exactly deny the other parts._ _

__“Prove it,” Hermann spits._ _

__“Prove- Uhh. Um. Okay.” How to prove this? He absentmindedly brings a hand up to his mouth, biting his thumb nails. Nails._ _

__This is a sort of Drift, right? So far it’s all been Hermann’s memories, but if Newt is here too, he ought to be able to project memories too. And Hermann’s memories shouldn’t go any farther than the night that Newt saved him, so if Newt can show him a memory of Hermann that happened after that night, that would demonstrate a lot of stuff, right? Because a mere facet of Hermann’s memories would not be able to show new memories._ _

__He really isn’t sure of how to project a memory. But in all of these freaky shifts Hermann has done, they’ve all been associated with what he was thinking of. So maybe if Newt just thinks real hard. He shuts his eyes and tries hard to summon up the memory he wants. Newt sitting on the bed, Hermann on the chair, Raleigh and Chuck and Mako beyond, the smell of nail polish…_ _

__“What the hell-”_ _

__Newt opens his eyes. The blurry hospital room is still there. But he can also faintly see the far crisper memory of the manicure party. It’s as if it’s superimposed over the blurry room, transparent like a projected movie, moving slowly._ _

__“Oh, it worked. Cool. So. Um. See. This is my proof. A memory of you that you don’t have, right? It’s my memory. Because I’m real, and this is the Drift.”_ _

__“I don’t understand,” Hermann says slowly, staring at Newt’s projected memory. “How...Why don’t I remember that? Did I _not_ die? And how, how can I possibly be Drifting, I’m too sick-” He goes still. _ _

__Once again, Newt doesn’t open his mouth, doesn’t speak, and yet can hear his voice, tinily, saying, “ _But I’m not gonna give up on you, I will never fucking give up on you. Not ever. I won’t waste time, but I won’t give up_.”_ _

__“Newton,” Hermann says in a dangerous voice, “What have you done?”_ _

__He’s so smart. He knows Newt so well._ _

__“I had to,” Newt whispers. “You were dying, I had to do _something_.” _ _

__“What did you do?” Hermann growls._ _

__“I. Uh. I couldn’t figure out, you know, how to just make you better. But I figured if I could still save the essence of you- And the Drift, the Drift is just information, a stream of information, and normally we feed that stream to another mind or to a Jaeger, but I thought, what if you fed it into a computer or hard drive? So I...did that. I saved you.”_ _

__Hermann stares at him._ _

__Newt awkwardly shifts his weight from foot to foot._ _

__“You did _what_?”_ _

__“I saved you. Literally.”_ _

__The hospital room is sort of wobbling. “And. We’re. In that?”_ _

__Newt nods. “Yeah. I’m, uh, Drifting with the information I saved. With you, essentially.”_ _

__“That’s insane.”_ _

__“I know. Mad genius here, remember? But I had to, Herms, I had to at least try.”_ _

__Hermann looks around him. The wobbling of the room steadies. He takes a few tentative steps. No limp. He presses his hand flat against the wall. “It feels so real.”_ _

__“It is real. It’s real memories. It’s, uh, virtual reality, I guess.”_ _

__“This is insane,” he says again. “Impossible...You better not be lying to me.”_ _

__“I’m not!” he insists. “Look at me, I’m telling the truth, you know I can’t lie worth shit!”_ _

__Hermann does look at him, hard. Eyes narrowing. And then opening wide again. Looking around him. Back to Newt. Accepting, perhaps, but then his face goes hard again._ _

__“You didn’t even ask me,” Hermann says accusingly. “You had no right. You, you interfered with my brain without even _asking_.” _ _

__Newt hunches his shoulders. He has considered that. “I know,” he says again in a small voice. “I’m really sorry. But, I, I didn’t know if it would work, and you were so sick, and you, you said you didn’t want to fight anymore so I...I had to.”_ _

__Hermann shakes his head. He sighs. “I can’t believe this even worked.”_ _

__This worked. Hermann is standing right in front of him. Standing, healthy, talking, perfect, absolutely himself. Alive, or damn near close enough. After so long._ _

__“Oh god,” Newt whispers, pressing his hand to his mouth, the tears rising in a second to spill over. “It worked. Oh my god, oh, Hermann.”_ _

__“Newton,” he says startled, and he comes closer and puts a hand tentatively on Newt’s shoulder and he can feel it there, the weight and pressure and warmth. Hermann, touching him. He sobs._ _

__The hand draws away. “Oh,” Hermann says in a different voice. “Oh. I did, didn’t I? I died.”_ _

__“Hermann-”_ _

__“Because this. Would only save my mind. And I was very sick. And you’re crying. I. I died.”_ _

__Newt can’t say anything. Can’t deny it._ _

__“Oh.”_ _

__“I’m sorry,” doesn’t feel like the right thing to say, but he doesn’t have anything else._ _

__“How long ago?”_ _

__He tries to wipe away the tears, a mostly futile gesture because _god_ , Hermann is here. “A little more than seven months now.”_ _

__“What- Seven months? Why? Why did you wait that long? Or, fuck, have you been here before, has this _happened_ already, do I not work-”_ _

__“I couldn’t figure out how to make it work,” Newt interrupts. “I tried plugging it into a computer - which seems really dumb now - and nothing happened, and Tendo couldn’t make it work either, so we thought…” His voice sort of wavers. “I thought I really lost you. It wasn’t until today after Mako said something to me that it occurred to me to try and Drift with you.”_ _

__“Oh. I...see.”_ _

__“But I think it works.”_ _

__“But this is...this is all I am, now? No body.”_ _

__“It’s better than nothing,” Newt says quietly, a little afraid. “And!” he continues more loudly. “I mean, yeah, right now you’re just, like, um, the essence of you, thoughts and memories and stuff, but that’s a lot, and there’s so much we can do now, Herms, there’s your hologram simulator you used for your Breach mockup, we could make that bigger and hook it up somehow, or, hey, if we can make skyscraper sized robots respond to the Drift then I bet we could make a smaller robot respond to just you, or, I don’t know, there’s so much we might be able to do and even like this, we can still see each other and talk to each other and t-touch each other and, I, I lost you, Herms, I thought I lost you so this is so, so much better and please d-don’t hate me.”_ _

__“I don’t hate you, Newton!” Hermann says, stepping forward again, practically oozing sincerity. “I’m just- This is very confusing, you understand that, and I...I’m dead, that’s a lot to work through, I’ll need time, but I...I didn’t want to die! I wanted to live and you- You saved me.”_ _

__Newt reaches out slowly and lays a hand on Hermann’s cheek. It feels just as he remembers it did. Warm, smooth skin. Hermann leaning slightly into the touch. Possibly its just because the sensation is solely constructed from memories. But who fucking _cares_ , because it feels right, and it’s him. Newt knows it’s him, because he can feel it there. The broken wire, whole once more. _ _

__He was going to say something. Instead, he goes up on tiptoe to kiss Hermann. This close, he can even feel Hermann’s heart beating, hear him breathing, smell chalk, taste tea in his mouth. He’s crying and smiling when he pulls away._ _

__“I missed you so much.”_ _


End file.
